Fabio Grobart

Fabio Grobart (also Antonio Blanco) was born in Białystok, Poland August 30, 1905; his birth name was Abraham Grobart a.k.a. Abraham Simjovitch. Apparently following orders of the Comintern, during the early 1920s he became a founding member of the Cuban Communist Party. After in 1922 entering the Young Communist League of Poland, and additional Communist activities he may have been sentenced to death and this may have obliged him to leave Poland to settle in Cuba.

He played an important, though generally undocumented, role in guiding the political leadership of Cuba's 1959 Revolution along a socialist path. Fabio Grobart was one of the founders of the Communist Party in Cuba in 1925, "and for decades served as a party ideologue and the man who introduced Castro at party meetings" (Goering, 2001). Grobart was both a member of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee and a member of Parliament. According to Boris Kozolchyk Grobart’s blunders were at least partially responsible for the outlawing of the Cuban Communist Party in 1948, and resulted in his deportation. In the 1960s, he directed Cuba Socialista and was top planner guiding orthodox ideologogy. As he grew older, he was considered the Party's historian. He died in Cuba on 22 October 1994.

Abraham was a major éminence grise of Cuban history and is most commonly known as Fabio Grobart, Fabio being a reference to the Roman Consul and guerrilla tactician Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus called "Cunctator (the delayer)", and thus to Fabian socialism.

Grobart’s actual background is not clearly known and subject to controversy. For instance during the foiled so-called microfaction plot, in which the “old” communists allegedly tried to oust or at least control Castro, Grobart was necessarily involved. But this same source provides no mention of Grobart's actions for or against this very significant plot. Raffy (2004 pp. 383–385) is more specific specifying a somewhat earlier date; this author states that Anibal Escalante, the son of a senior Cuban independence fighter who fought under the command of Calixto Garcia, was blamed for the plot. Raffe credits Grobart with saving Castro. Escalante was exiled to Prague and the USSR ambassador Kondriatsev was sent home from Cuba. Apparently this effort to save Castro was supported by Castro’s feared security chief “Barba Roja” Manuel Piñeiro [7]. Those accused of being co-conspirators were imprisoned.

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