"Cuba was massively supported and kept afloat by the U.S.S.R."
It was not - Russia bought some of their sugar - not enough to make a significant difference.
The aftermath of the Cuban missile Crisis precluded any more involvement than that.
Cuba needed to evolve from a basically poor rural economy into a self-supporting country with industries of its own.
The small amount of income it got from Russia only managed it to keep its head above water - just.   
I really don't see too many eulogies for Castro here Bozo - rather, it is an attempt to discuss the achievements and failures of Cuba as a nation and could do without the mindless, right-wing snide.
Castro had his faults, but whatever they were, it was the world-wide embargo of its goods that kept it poverty-stricken.
That Cold War embargo still exists log after the fall of world Communism - the melting of it began with Obama but don't stand a chance in the mind-freezing fascism of Trump's America.
I'd like to agree with Ake's 'Aids' comments, but I'm afraid the morality clampdown came before the 'Gay Plague' hysteria.
The clampdown came to break with Batista's allowing the development of a society which freely used sex as a tourist attraction for rich Americans.
The partial clampdown on the church had one eye on the use made of religion to suppress and enslave peoples throughout Latin and South America - as the ghost of Archbishop Romero and the raped and murdered Salvadorian nuns, if you want to check.
Jim Carroll