Fidel Castro, the tempestuous, charismatic fomenter and continuing prime mover of the Cuban revolution, may be the most hated dictator in the Western Hemisphere, but he is his country's indispensable man, a ubiquitous despot who supplies the energy for nearly every phase of contemporary Cuban life. Besides holding the posts of prime minister, secretary of the Communist Party and commander in chief of the armed forces, Castro has placed himself in charge of the Cuban agricultural program and spends as much time studying the uses of fertilizer and theories of cattle breeding as he does reading Marxist-Leninist texts. Working an average of 18 to 20 hours each day, he is always on the move: inspecting farmlands, mediating disputes, expounding ideology and, above all, exhorting his people to harder work, greater sacrifices -- and intransigent animosity toward everything American. Despite the ever-present threat of assassination, he despises caution and mingles impulsively with the masses throughout the island, often to the dismay of his bodyguards.

Although the negative aspects of his regime are usually emphasized in the American press, just as propagandistic blasts against American life are trumpeted in Cuba's press, Castro's revolution has achieved some undeniable reforms affecting the lives of the peasants and the proletariat. It has virtually wiped out illiteracy, provided free education and medical care for all, instituted revisions of land and rent laws, and claims to have achieved a higher standard of living for the masses, whose support was instrumental in sweeping him to power. There is no one at large and alive in Cuba today, either in the zealous cadre of revolutionaries that surrounds him or among the Cuban people, who is capable of opposing Castro. He is larger than life size; his image dominates Cuba. For better or worse, he is contemporary Cuba.

Castro's comfortable beginnings hardly intimated that he would become the eventual leader of a Marxist-oriented revolution -- and an enemy of democratic freedom. Born in 1927, the son of a wealthy Galician immigrant sugar-plantation owner in Oriente province, he attended a Jesuit high school before entering Havana University, where he studied law. Although he did not become a Marxist until later, it was here that he first encountered the writings of Marx and Engels. As a student, he spoke out against the corrupt administration of then-President Carlos Prio Socarrás and discovered that his fiery oratory could sway audiences. After graduation he began his law practice -- and soon joined the Ortodoxos, a left-of-center political reform party that nominated him in 1952 for a seat in the national congress. The scheduled election, which would also have chosen a new president, never took place: On March 10, 1952, former President Fulgencio Batista, prevented by Cuban law from seeking re-election, led a successful coup d'état against the Socarrás government and installed himself as the absolute dictator of Cuba. The salient features of Batista's regime soon surfaced: The democratic constitution of 1940 was abrogated; civil liberties were drastically curtailed; government fiscal corruption increased; and overt dissenters exposed themselves to the dangers of terror and torture.

Believing that a bold act would set off a national uprising against Batista, Castro spearheaded an assault by 125 young men and women on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago, the island's second largest city. The attack failed, but its date -- July 26, 1953 -- became the rallying cry of Castro's revolutionary movement ("26 de Julio") and his three-hour defense speech at his trial -- "History Will Absolve Me" -- its manifesto. After serving only a small portion of their sentences, he and his followers were released from the Isle of Pines prison (the same one, ironically, in which the most eminent anti-Castro revolutionaries are now jailed) and exiled to Mexico. It was Batista's biggest mistake. In the predawn hours of November 25, 1956, Castro and 82 followers, pursued by Mexican police, boarded a boat and set sail for Cuba. Eight days later they landed on the southern coast of Oriente province, where he and five companions survived a government ambush and escaped into the mountains. "Are we in the Sierra Maestra?" he reportedly asked the first peasant he saw. "Yes? Then the revolution has been won!" Castro was soon joined by the other survivors of the government attack, and together they recruited enough peasants in the area to form a small and dedicated striking force, further augmented by defectors from Batista's army.

His ensuing campaign against overwhelming government forces is a lesson in guerrilla warfare. Defeated psychologically almost before he was engaged militarily, Batista stunned the world on January 1, 1959, by fleeing the island; in anticipation of possible defeat, he had planned and financed his departure well in advance. Within days, Castro and his guerrillas entered Havana and formally took control of the country. The uncomplicated informality of life in the Sierra Maestra did not smoothly adapt to Havana, however, and revolutionary enthusiasm proved a poor substitute for administrative experience. Castro's accession to power was marked by chaos. Colossal follies and atrocities were committed. Large sums of money were dissipated, stolen or mishandled, and a public blood bath in which thousands of Batista supporters were executed shocked and dismayed the outside world.

It soon became apparent that Castro's ideology was far more radical than most had suspected. Sweeping decrees rocked the middle and upper classes from their privileged positions. Castro's dictatorship summarily and illegally expropriated ownership of Cuba's cattle, sugar and tobacco industries, banks, oil refineries and resort facilities from all American and other overseas business interests; formed cooperatives; divided large landholdings among the peasants. And in December 1961, Castro betrayed the democratic promises of his early administration when he proclaimed to a screaming multitude in Havana, "I am a Marxist-Leninist and will be one until the day I die!" Four years later, Castro formally changed the name of Cuba's United Socialist Party to the Cuban Communist Party, complete with 100-man Central Committee and 11-man Politburo. By then, U.S.-Cuban relations had long since passed the political point of no return.

On April 17, 1961, came the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, a humiliating defeat for the U.S. and a historic victory for Castro's forces. Eighteen months later, on the pretext of defending his country from another U.S. attack, Castro persuaded Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to install offensive atomic missiles on Cuban soil, thus precipitating the seven-day Missile Crisis that brought the world's two most powerful nations to an "eyeball-to-eyeball" confrontation (in Dean Rusk's words) and thereby to the brink of thermonuclear war. When Moscow, under U.S. pressure, prudently removed the missiles, Castro's price for that "affront" was more than enough Soviet matériel and training to provide Cuba with what is probably the best-equipped military establishment in Latin America. Since the Missile Crisis, Castro's Cuba has somehow managed to survive a crippling American blockade, the loss of diplomatic relations with the rest of Latin America (except Mexico) and a variety of other political, economic and military ills and pressures. At the same time, she has maintained at least the appearance of a belligerent degree of ideological independence from her benefactor and ally, the Soviet Union. Early last year, at a Tricontinental Congress held in Havana, Cuba attempted to assume the leadership of revolutionary movements in the emerging nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Castro proposed that all Socialist countries commit themselves to material support of revolutions throughout the world. To the limited extent that Cuba's economy permits, he has since backed up his words with warlike action: Cuban-supplied weapons have turned up in at least four South American nations, and the aid, arms and expertise Cuba offers Communists within other Latin-American nations is a matter of constant concern to their governments and to our State Department.

Castro's Communist regime could not have survived this long without the Soviet Union's military and financial backing. But it must also be recognized that enough of Cuba's 7,336,000 people have either supported or paid lip service to Castro's dictatorship to keep him in power -- despite eight years of internal hardship, the counterrevolutionary campaigns of 1962 and 1963, the sectarian disputes within his own party, the disparity between promised goals and actual progress to date, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of dissident Cubans to the U.S., and the severe economic shortages that continue to plague the country. Whether putative gains from his leadership will offset Cuba's past blunders, present bellicosity, and the drastic curtailment of individual freedom imposed by its new ideology, whether history will ultimately "absolve" Castro as he prophesies, are questions for posterity. This much, however, is clear: He is one of the most feared political figures of our time, and as such, he wields a power disproportionate to the size of his tiny island nation.

Not the least logical of reasons for this fear in the U.S. is ignorance of Castro's own view of himself and his goals, of his role in world politics, of his aspirations for his country, his personal motivations for the stormy course on which he is embarked -- and for this lack, the American press and he himself are not blameless. Of propagandistic boasts, as of pro-Communist and anti-U.S. diatribes, there has been more than enough. But Castro has been elusively chary of interviews by members of the American press, perhaps because the majority may be presumed to be something less than objective. It was PLAYBOY's belief that an unexpurgated interview -- despite the evasions it might contain -- would do much to clarify the thoughts and actions at work behind the Cuban curtain, and thus to illuminate a darkly threatening presence in our hemisphere.

To this end, we contacted old Havana hand and author-journalist Lee Lockwood, who had already been granted an audience with Castro as preparation for a forthcoming book, Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel, to be published by Macmillan in March, and of which an expanded version of this interview will be one part. When the two met at Castro's Isle of Pines home, the result was the longest and most revealing conversation the Cuban leader has ever held with a member of the American press.

Lounging at a card table on the veranda in his green fatigues, wearing socks but no boots, his hair matted, and smoking a succession of long Cuban cigars, the Cuban dictator spoke with Lockwood volubly and inexhaustibly -- often through the night and into the dawn. At the end of a week, their conversations (conducted in Spanish) had filled nearly 25 hours of tape.

"An interview with Castro," writes Lockwood, "is an extraordinary experience, and until you get used to it, an unnerving one. Unless you stand your ground, it's seldom a conversation at all, but more like an extended monolog with occasional questions from the audience. When replying to a question, he would usually begin in a deceptively detached, conversational tone of voice, with his eyes fixed on the table, while his hands fidgeted compulsively with a lighter, a ballpoint pen or anything else at hand. As he warmed to his subject, Castro would start to squirm and swivel in his chair. The rhythm of his discourse would slowly quicken, and at the same time he would begin drawing closer to me little by little, pulling his chair with him each time, until -- having started out at right angles to my chair -- he would finally be seated almost alongside me. His foot, swinging spasmodically beneath the table, would touch my foot, then withdraw. Then his knee would wedge against mine as he leaned still closer, oblivious of all but the point he was making, his voice becoming steadily more insistent. As he bent forward, his hands would move gracefully out and back in emphatic cadence with his words, then begin reaching toward me, tapping my knee to punctuate a sentence, prodding my chest with an emphatic forefinger, still in the same hypnotizing rhythm. Finally, I would become aware of his dark brown eyes, glittering in the frame of his tangled beard, peering fervently into my own eyes, in true Latin style, from only inches away as he continued speaking. He would remain thus sometimes for as long as a quarter of an hour, fixing me with his messianic gaze."

Regarding the frankness of the Cuban leader's replies, Lockwood adds: "Naturally, you cannot expect a man in Castro's position to answer every question for publication as openly as if he were having a private chat with a friend. Nevertheless, as one who has spent a good deal of time in Cuba, I believe that his answers were generally honest -- however ideologically inimical his views."

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