Cubans in dark on fate of Fidel

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Cubans have no idea whether dictator Fidel Castro is lying at death's door or sitting up and watching reruns of "Jeopardy."

The health of the country's leader is a state secret. Even President Bush yesterday said he had no idea what the prognosis is for the ailing Mr. Castro.

The situation is reminiscent of the secrecy surrounding the death of Josef Stalin in 1953. The only clue for Russians that the iron-fisted Soviet dictator had died was when radio stations started playing gloomy music and bells tolled.

"There is a certain parallel between the Kremlin and Cuba," said award-winning Stalin biographer Robert Conquest.

After handing over power to his younger brother, Raul, Fidel Castro has disappeared from the radar, leaving both the people of the communist island and Cuban exiles in the United States to wonder what has become of the man who has ruled Cuba for more than four decades.

"Nobody knows anything," said Tamara Lush, a Miami-based staff writer for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. "I was just at a meeting with a Cuban-American group, and every five minutes somebody's cell would ring. 'Do you know anything?' They want to pop the cork on the champagne."

Cuba's state-run press is not saying much. First, the 79-year-old Mr. Castro was said to have an intestinal ailment, brought on by stress. After surgery, said to be "complicated" and "important," there was radio silence. Where and when the surgery took place was not known, nor the name of the doctor. Mr. Castro is said to be recovering in an undisclosed location.

"Especially with authoritarian leaders, there is great effort to conceal any illness," said Jerrold Post, a George Washington University professor who has written extensively on totalitarianism.

Such secrecy was commonplace in the Soviet Union, said Mr. Conquest, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "Before [Mikhail] Gorbachev, when [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev fell ill, they kept it a secret."

In fragile political systems such as Russia and Cuba, Mr. Conquest added, "You've got a machine. When one of the plugs is pulled out, it doesn't work the same way."