Fidel Castro: Revolutionary, Communist, Anti-Imperialist and Internationalist Whose Ideas Live On

Fidel Castro in 1984

Revolutionary, Communist, Anti-Imperialist and Internationalist Whose Ideas Live On

13 August 1926 – 13 August 2026

On the occasion of the centenary of Fidel Castro’s birth, the New Communist Party of Yugoslavia (NKPJ) and the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ) pay tribute to one of the most significant revolutionaries, communists and anti-imperialist statesmen of the twentieth century — a man whose life and political struggle became a symbol of resistance to imperialism, colonialism, exploitation and the subjugation of peoples.

One hundred years after his birth, Fidel Castro’s name remains inseparably linked with the Cuban Revolution. Yet his historical significance extends far beyond the borders of Cuba. For millions of people throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia and the rest of the world, he represented proof that even a small nation could stand against vastly more powerful forces and defend its right to determine its own destiny, control its natural resources and choose its own path of development.

100 YEARS WITH FIDEL

On 13 August 2026, at the invitation of the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba, activists of the NKPJ and SKOJ took part in a commemorative gathering in Belgrade, held in the Park of Friendship, beside the tree planted in Fidel Castro’s honour.

On that occasion, our activists displayed a banner bearing the words:

“100 YEARS WITH FIDEL”

— the slogan under which the international communist movement is marking this important anniversary for progressive people throughout the world.

This centenary is not merely an occasion to remember a historical figure. It is also an opportunity to reflect upon the ideas, struggles and questions that defined Fidel Castro’s political life and that remain relevant today.

FROM MONCADA TO THE CUBAN REVOLUTION

From the attack on the Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953, through the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra, to the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro remained committed to the belief that political freedom has little meaning without economic independence, national sovereignty and social justice.

When the young Fidel was brought before a court following the failed attack on Moncada, he transformed his defence into a political manifesto. His closing words became one of the best-known revolutionary declarations of the twentieth century:

“Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”

After his release from prison and exile in Mexico, Fidel, together with Raúl Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara and other revolutionaries, prepared the return to Cuba. From 1956 onward, the guerrilla struggle in the Sierra Maestra gradually developed into a nationwide revolutionary movement that ultimately overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

The triumph of the Revolution in January 1959 marked not only a change of government but the beginning of a profound transformation of Cuban society.

For Fidel, national independence could never be reduced to a flag, an anthem or formal sovereignty. A country could only be truly independent if it possessed the right to decide for itself how its economy, natural resources and social development would be organised.

SOCIALISM AND HUMAN DIGNITY

Under Fidel’s leadership, Cuba embarked upon a path of socialist transformation.

Education and healthcare were made accessible to the broadest sections of society, while enormous efforts were devoted to eradicating illiteracy and developing science, culture and medicine. Schools, universities, hospitals and medical institutions became among the most recognisable achievements of revolutionary Cuba.

For Fidel, socialism was never simply another way of organising the economy.

At the centre of his political philosophy stood the value of human life.

Does a person have access to education?

Can the sick receive medical treatment?

Can a worker live from his labour?

Can a child born into a poor family receive the same opportunities for education as the child of the privileged?

Can people live with dignity?

These were, for Fidel, among the fundamental measures of the success of a society.

He rejected the idea that social progress could be measured only through profits, stock markets, the wealth of corporations or the prosperity of a privileged minority.

The real measure was the condition of ordinary people.

A society in which enormous wealth exists alongside hunger, illiteracy, disease and extreme poverty could not, in his view, be considered truly successful.

This is why Fidel repeatedly insisted that political rights and social rights could not be separated. Freedom loses much of its meaning when a person has no bread, no school, no medicine and no possibility of living a dignified life.

REVOLUTION AS A PERMANENT RESPONSIBILITY

On 1 May 2000, Fidel gave one of his most famous definitions of revolution.

For him, revolution meant understanding the historical moment; changing everything that must be changed; struggling for equality and freedom; defending the values in which one believes; acting with solidarity and courage; and maintaining a profound belief in the power of truth and ideas.

This definition became, in many ways, his political testament.

Revolution was not simply the victory of 1959.

It was not merely the overthrow of Batista or the entry of revolutionary forces into Havana.

Revolution was a permanent responsibility to transform society, correct mistakes, defend independence and preserve the conviction that human dignity cannot be bought or sold.

For Fidel, socialism therefore represented a different scale of values:

• not a society in which a person is worth as much as he possesses, but one in which human dignity has no price;

• not the freedom of capital to exploit, but the freedom of human beings from exploitation;

• not the right of a minority to unlimited wealth, but the right of all people to a life worthy of a human being.

ANTI-IMPERIALISM AND THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO CHOOSE THEIR FUTURE

Fidel Castro became one of the most recognisable representatives of the global anti-imperialist movement.

For him, imperialism did not mean only military occupation or territorial conquest. It also existed in economic dependency, political pressure, control over natural resources, domination by monopolies and an international system in which powerful states and corporations determine the conditions under which poorer countries must live.

The Cuban Revolution therefore became much more than a national struggle.

It became a symbol of the right of every people — large or small — to be the master of its own country and its own future.

For millions of people whose countries had experienced colonialism and foreign domination, Cuba acquired a symbolic importance far greater than its geographical size.

A small Caribbean island, situated only a short distance from the United States, insisted for decades upon its right to determine its own political and social system.

Despite decades of political, economic and other forms of pressure, Cuba preserved its independence and its right to choose its own path of social development.

INTERNATIONALISM AND SOLIDARITY

Fidel’s internationalism represents one of the most important parts of his political legacy.

Cuba never understood its Revolution exclusively as a national project.

Cuban doctors, teachers, technicians, specialists and revolutionaries worked and served in countries across the world. Cuba supported anticolonial and national liberation movements, particularly in Africa, where its role in Angola and in the broader struggle against apartheid in southern Africa occupies an important place in the history of international solidarity.

For Fidel, internationalism was not charity offered by the rich to the poor.

It was solidarity among equals.

This principle continued long after the military conflicts of the Cold War had ended. Cuban doctors and medical personnel became one of the most visible expressions of Cuba’s international presence, serving communities in numerous countries and demonstrating in practice the principle that knowledge, medicine and human solidarity should not be privileges reserved for the wealthy.

FIDEL, YUGOSLAVIA AND THE NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT

For the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, Fidel Castro also carries an additional historical significance.

Socialist Yugoslavia and revolutionary Cuba met and cooperated within the Non-Aligned Movement, one of the most important attempts by the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America to create an international order in which they would not merely be objects of the policies of the great powers.

Cuba hosted the Sixth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana in 1979, and Fidel Castro served as Chairman of the Movement from 1979 to 1983.

Fidel Castro and Josip Broz Tito did not always share the same views concerning international relations, relations with the major blocs or the precise character of non-alignment.

Yet behind their differences stood one of the defining questions of the twentieth century:

Do small and medium-sized nations have the right to their own voice and their own path of development?

For Yugoslavia, the answer was expressed primarily through a policy of non-alignment between the great blocs.

For revolutionary Cuba, anti-imperialism possessed a more explicitly revolutionary and socialist character.

But both experiences insisted that the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America and other parts of the world had the right to participate in history as independent actors rather than as objects of great-power politics.

FIDEL AND THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET

Another increasingly important dimension of Fidel’s political thought was his concern for the ecological future of humanity.

Already at the end of the twentieth century, he warned that environmental destruction could not be separated from global inequality, poverty and an economic model based upon unlimited production, consumption and exploitation of finite natural resources.

At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Fidel warned that humanity itself was being endangered by the rapid destruction of the natural conditions necessary for life.

For him, ecology was not a luxury of wealthy societies.

It was a question of human survival.

He saw a profound injustice in a world in which a relatively small part of humanity consumes a disproportionate share of the planet’s resources while hundreds of millions of people lack the most basic conditions for life.

This is why, in Fidel’s later political thought, three great questions increasingly converged: socialism, anti-imperialism and ecology.

Behind all three stood the same fundamental question:

Will human beings and nature serve capital, or will the economy serve humanity and the preservation of life?

A CENTURY LATER

Today, one hundred years after Fidel Castro’s birth, the questions to which he devoted his political life have not disappeared.

Wars have not disappeared.

Poverty and hunger have not been eradicated.

Economic inequalities have reached enormous proportions.

Pressure by powerful states upon smaller countries belongs not only to history.

Competition for markets, energy and natural resources continues to shape the destinies of millions of people.

At the same time, humanity faces an increasingly serious environmental crisis whose consequences Fidel warned about decades ago.

For this reason, the centenary of his birth is not merely an occasion for historical remembrance.

It is an opportunity to ask again the questions Fidel posed throughout his political life:

Will the economy serve human beings, or will human beings serve profit?

Will international relations be governed by law or by force?

Do natural resources belong to peoples or to great capital?

Will the world become a community of equal nations, or remain a hierarchy of masters and the subordinated?

Will education, healthcare and human dignity be universal rights, or privileges determined by wealth?

The NKPJ and SKOJ believe that preserving the memory of Fidel Castro also means preserving the memory of the great historical struggles of peoples for national liberation, socialism, equality, peace and international solidarity.

Fidel belonged to an age of great revolutions, anticolonial struggles and hopes that a more just world could be built.

But the ideals to which he devoted his life did not disappear with the historical era to which he belonged.

As long as exploitation, imperialism, social inequality and attempts to subordinate peoples continue to exist, so too will the struggle for a society in which the human being — rather than profit — is the highest value.

One hundred years after his birth, history continues to debate Fidel Castro, his Revolution and his legacy.

But one fact cannot be erased: a revolutionary from a small Caribbean island left a mark on world history far greater than the size of the country he led.

He transformed Cuba into one of the great political symbols of the twentieth century and made the defence of sovereignty, social justice and international solidarity inseparable from his name.

On the centenary of his birth, we therefore remember once again the young Fidel standing before the court after Moncada, without a state, without an army and without international power — armed only with an idea and the conviction that the existing order could be changed.

His words continue to echo through history:

“Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”

FIDEL CASTRO

Revolutionary. Communist. Anti-Imperialist. Internationalist.

His time belongs to history.

The struggle for social justice, freedom and the dignity of peoples continues.

100 YEARS WITH FIDEL

1926–2026