Were conditions for the average working man (or woman) improved or worsened by Castro's taking of power? Would they have felt like their lives had been better under Batista, or did they welcome the Communist control?

How many people did Castro actually detain and/or kill? Or rather what is the calculation per year of it.

Quoting /u/ippolit_belinski from the other thread:

How far were the aims of the '59 revolution achieved under Castro regime? Or perhaps I should first ask, what were the aims of the revolution besides the obvious removal of Batista regime?

What were Castro's highlights as to his positions on foreign/domestic policy?

I'm told that Americans tried to assassinate Castro over 600 times. Even allowing for severe inflation, that speaks to a concerted effort on the part of the US to take Castro out. What should we take away from the failure of these attempts? Did the failure to remove Castro from, well, living, have a positive effect on his supporters, and, as a result, his worldview? Does that last sentence set a record for comma usage? In the aggregate, why did all of these attempts fail? It's hard to understand how Castro survived so many assassination attempts - I'm hoping mainly for clarification on the politics involved here.

What was Cuba's involvement in the Angolan Civil War? What strategic and political goals did they hope to achieve, and to what extent did they succeed or fail?

(It's one of those Cold War era conflicts I've heard of but know next to nothing about so I'm really looking for an introduction to/basic exploration of the topic.)

What was Cuba's special period and what were its consequences?

Also, how did the USSR help Cuba despite the embargo?

EDIT: Spamming this thread a bit more, why did Cuba participate in the Angolan war?

How much money did the Soviet Union pour into Cuba?

My understanding is that Castro started off at least neutral towards the US. How much was it US actions (justified or not) that pushed him towards alignment withe USSR? Is it possible to imagine a non-aligned Cuba under Castro?

How did the Cuban revolution affect racial equity within Cuba?

When did communism come up during the Cuban Revolution? Did it start as a communist revolution, or was that some sort of consequence of going up against american interests during the cold war?

I ask this because I was reading about the attack on Moncada Barracks (not sure how it translates to english, forgive me), and Fidel's statement for his legal defense (History will absolve me), and, while there are clear accusations against Batista, I don't necessarily see any clear intention of installing a socialist regime. Admittedly, I didn't read the whole thing (not nearly), because it is incredibly long, because I have no idea where to find the whole transcription and specially because I can't find it in a language I can understand.

I'd like to hear about Castro and his policy of nuclear weapons. If I recall he was pretty mad at America and was willing to use them. However latter in life I seem to recall he is glad he didn't. Can someone clarify his policy of nuclear weapons and his thoughts?

What do people in Cuba generally think of Castro? There have been a couple of topics on this, but all the answers were from emigrants in the US.

This fairly popular video details Castro's near-obsession with dairy; examples include being able to eat 18 scoops of ice cream after a meal, building a modern ice cream parlor in the Havana slums, and the famous Ubre Blanca.

I was wondering if it's historically accurate or just embellished. Also, regarding Ubre Blanca, was she really the only successful Holstein-Zebu hybrid or were there others?

Do we have information about the 638 assassination attempts against him by the CIA? Where there any spectacular incidents of survival?

Perhaps a bit of a long shot, but I couldn't find the answer anywhere when I searched for it yesterday:

Was Fidel Castro aware of the Tropico video game series? Was the game (and the sequels) allowed in Cuba, being a parody of that very country?

What happened with the Bay of Pigs? It just seems like not just a defeat but a fuck up of monumental and almost systematic proportions. Did any part of the plan go right at all?

Under Castro, how free were Cubans to emigrate / foreigners to immigrate? Did that change with the fall of the Soviet Union?

Not really a question about castro or this revolution but the recent developments made me realise that I know a lot about cuba after the end of the second world war, but nearly nothing about their time as a colony and the way they regained independence. Do our experts have any reading material that they can recommend about the spanish-american war, the way cuba gained independence and the (political) circumsstances? Thanks in advance.

any good books on the CIA activities trying to subvert Castro?

What was Castro's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis? Was he merely the Soviet's pawn, or did he actively push for missile systems to be brought to Cuba, despite the risk it would put his people under? Did Castro get anything in particular from the USSR in exchange for allowing the systems to be built on his island?

Well, I am undoubtedly very late to the party, but I'd like to ask: What do we know about Castro's handling of the 1980 immigration crisis, when the "Mariel boatlift" ended up transporting some 120k Cubans to the U.S.? How did he try to spin the situation to his own people? And what led to the free passage being closed?

What's the story behind Castro's procurement of the boat Granma? How did they manage to fit so many people (and their equipment+provisions) in there for the trip?

How do the regimes and legacies of Castro and Pinochet compare? They are both proclaimed as heroes by some and demons by others, broadly split along left/right wing lines. They were both supported by foreign superpowers, both are supposed to be responsible for elevating their countries out of poverty, both are denounced as brutal dictators.

What's the truth of the matter?

I heard somewhere that Fidel Castro betrayed "Che" Guevara by giving CIA data about Che. Is this true?

More than a million Cubans have fled the Island since the revolution. Cuba had a population of approximately seven million at the time of the revolution. Has there been any similar refugee waves not caused by war?

Q1. Is he a real Communist like Lenin, or another tyrant like Stalin and Mao?

Do he lives like a real communist that sacrifice everything he had for the people of Cuba, and live like they do? Or he's like Stalin and Mao, where the upper class of the nation is living in prosperity, while the worker class of the nation is living in poverty?

Q2: Did the life of the Cuban got better after he overthrown the bourgeois government? In terms of medical, social, overall standard of living, etc.