Suchergebnisse

The Cuban (post)-Soviet diaspora is the human collective comprising the persons coming from the territories of the (former) Soviet Union, who immigrated to Cuba and nowadays live in this Archipelago – as well as their descendants. This migration occurred during the period of close ties between Cuba and the USSR, that is, 1960–91. Compared with the other overseas ethnic communities now living in Cuba, the (post)-Soviet diaspora is the largest one, surpassed only by the Spanish immigration, which – however – is not usually perceived by Cubans as a diaspora, because Spain is a major contributor to the 'mainstream' Cuban culture. So, the (post)-Soviet diaspora may legitimately be considered as the largest 'clearly foreign' human contribution to the Cuban population in recent times. The most important character of this collectivity is that its first generation (i.e., the immigrants from the [post]Soviet countries) is overwhelmingly female, constituted by women from the USSR who in the period between ca. 1961 and ca. 1991 married to Cuban students affiliated to Soviet government's scholarship programmes. This 'romantic' stance makes this diaspora very unusual when compared with the standard causes making people migrate. The numeric strength of the (post)-Soviet diaspora contrasts with its very low visibility in the Cuban cultural, media and academic discourse, especially comparing with that of the relatively minor – in the numeric sense – diasporic constituents of the Cuban population: the Chinese, Arab, Jewish, etc. We analyse the main demographic, gender, ethnographic, historical, cultural and political aspects of the (post)-Soviet diaspora in Cuba.