Cuba’s communist regime will begin broadcasting Russian language courses in the coming months, resuming a Soviet-era practice after 40 years, Russian and Cuban-centric outlets reported Monday.
The Russian outlet Giport cited Elizaveta Golovakha, a senior lecturer at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. Golovakha stated that the Russian language lessons, titled “Russian on TV,” have already been recorded and are awaiting to be broadcast in Cuba. Golovakha reportedly told a reporter from Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency that the time of the upcoming broadcasts is currently being coordinated with the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television.
“There is a high interest in learning Russian in Cuba, especially among those who do not have access to the Internet,” Golovakha reportedly said — failing to mention that the Castro regime maintains strict censorship of the internet and that internet access is prohibitively expensive for the millions of Cubans impoverished by decades under communism.
The Russian embassy in Havana celebrated the announcement as “excellent news” on its official social media accounts, remarking, “Cubans will soon be able to learn Russian in classes broadcast on national TV.”
The Russian language television lessons will reintroduce a practice that the Communist Party maintained during the heyday of its relationship with the Soviet Union. The Russian Embassy in Havana explained on Facebook that the project originally began in fall 2023 as a joint collaboration between the Russian Pushkin language institute, the University of Havana, and Cuban television — the latter two controlled by the Castro regime in their entirety.
It remains publicly unclear at press time if the Russian language lessons will be affected by the worsening and near-endless blackouts in Cuba that led to the Castro regime ordering the temporal suspension of school, work, and sports activities nationwide in a desperate attempt to “save power.” Cuba’s barely functional power grid, which completely collapsed several times in recent months, is unable to provide enough electricity to all of the country at once.
For decades, the Castro regime maintained compulsory Russian language courses in Cuban schools and universities even after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, phasing out the teaching of the English language.
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Late murderous dictator Fidel Castro, who originally demanded the compulsory teaching of the Russian language in Cuba, reportedly lamented in 2008 that “the Russians were studying English. Everybody was studying English, except for us who were studying Russian.”
According to the Madrid-based outlet Diario de Cuba, Russia’s Kazan Federal University runs an initiative with the Pedagogical University of Havana for the teaching of the Russian language as an elective subject. In 2024, both nations agreed to have Russian teachers sent to Cuba for the joint development of textbooks in Spanish, in addition to other unspecified educational projects.
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In recent years, largely as a result of the ongoing economic collapse of Cuba under communism, the Castro regime has sought an increased amount of aid from Russia, its top financier during the Soviet Union era. Russia resumed its oil shipments to Cuba in 2024 following a year-long pause as Cuba endures a severe shortage of fuel for both the nation’s vehicles and its barely working power plants. The Russian fuel shipments also help offset a reduction in shipments from Venezuela’s socialist regime.
A new Russian shipment of crude oil arrived in Cuba on Tuesday morning. The Russian tanker Akademik Gubkin reportedly delivered 790,000 barrels of crude oil to Cuba’s refineries. In July, a Russian delegation traveled to Havana to discuss the construction of a Russian-made oil refinery. Duma Deputy Speaker Alexander Babakov said at the time that “Cuba has crude oil, it is logical not to import oil products, but to produce them here,” and added that “the largest Russian companies could participate here.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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