The Demons of Cuba: The Prophecy of Dostoevsky

When Fyodor Dostoevsky published "Demons" —also translated as "The Possessed"— between 1871 and 1872, it was roughly 45 years until the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. Lenin was just a child, and Stalin had not yet been born. However, within those pages, a significant portion of the moral anatomy of totalitarianism that would define the 20th century appears with extraordinary foresight.

The novel was partly born out of the impression left by the real case of the revolutionary Sergei Nechayev, whose clandestine circle murdered one of its own members. Dostoevsky transformed that episode into something much larger: an exploration of political fanaticism, manipulation, the destruction of values, and the use of human beings as mere material to construct a future society.

That is why The Demons can be read today from Cuba with an unsettling familiarity. Piotr Verjovenski is probably the most politically terrifying figure in the novel. He manipulates, conspires, manufactures enemies, compromises individuals with one another, and understands that fear can unite an organization better than any moral principle. He doesn’t need everyone to believe: he needs everyone to be committed, monitored, and afraid to leave the group.

Here we immediately see the parallelism with the system created by castrocommunism. This is not to claim that Fidel Castro is simply Stavrogin, that Raúl Castro is Verjovenski, or that each Russian character has a Cuban counterpart. The comparison would be too simplistic. Fidel embodies traits from several of them: the magnetism of Stavrogin, the manipulative ability of Verjovenski, and, above all, the claim to place a historic idea above the individual. Raúl represented for decades another essential dimension of the system: discipline, military structure, surveillance, and continuity.

Ernesto Guevara represented, in turn, the romantic dimension of the revolutionary willing to justify violence in the name of a future humanity. Later emerged something even more characteristic of long-lasting regimes: the bureaucrat. This is where Miguel Díaz-Canel, appears, no longer as the epic founder of a revolution, but as an administrator of an inherited structure.

Dostoevsky understood something crucial: totalitarianism does not necessarily begin with prisons and firing squads. It begins when an idea promises to be so perfect that any crime committed to achieve it can eventually be justified.

The character of Shigaliov takes this logic to its ultimate consequences. His project aims to completely reorganize society, ultimately leading, paradoxically, to an immense concentration of power. Dostoevsky was precisely critiquing the claim to sacrifice real human freedom in the name of a supposed future collective happiness.

Cuba followed its own version of that path. They promised justice and imposed a single-party regime. They promised emancipation and filled the people with chains. They promised equality, and a privileged ruling elite emerged. They promised to give power to the people, but the State ended up controlling everything.

In 2026, Freedom House continues to classify Cuba as a “Not Free” country, with 9 points out of 100, highlighting the effective prohibition of political pluralism, restrictions on independent media, and the repression of dissent. Prisoners Defenders reported 1,306 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience at the end of June. And yet, perhaps the most unsettling mystery is not that the wolf exists.
The mystery is that the flock still exists.

For decades, the Cuban regime constructed extraordinarily powerful mechanisms of obedience: fear of losing one’s job, fear of imprisonment, fear of the neighbor who informs, fear of their children’s school record, fear of publicly expressing what is discussed at home. But something is changing. Cubans who have remained silent for years are now protesting. Others are speaking out, recording the police officers no one dared to record before, and posting online what has only been whispered for decades. Each citizen who overcomes their fear psychologically leaves the herd even before confronting the system politically.

What is truly bewildering is that some continue to remain in the fold even after physically escaping from Cuba. They live in Miami, Madrid, or any other democratic society. They can criticize, organize protests, establish publications, vote, travel, become prosperous, and so on. They enjoy precisely those freedoms that the Cuban system denies or restricts, yet some still defend the regime from which they fled.

It is one of the great psychological paradoxes of servitude: the cage door may be open, yet the cage can remain for years within the mind. Therein lies perhaps the deepest relevance of "The Demons." Dostoevsky understood that political demons do not only reside in government palaces. They can also take root in consciences in the form of paralyzing fear, fanaticism that leads to crimes, lies repeated until they become customs, obedience turned into virtue, and the inertia that leads to the abyss.

Cuba needs to transform much more than its institutions. It needs to expel those demons. No wolf can dominate a flock forever when the victims realize they were never meant to be sheep marching submissively and shouting slogans in favor of the one who devours them.

We are at a particularly favorable moment to exorcise demons both inside and outside of Cuba.