Warunki życia w rolniczych spółdzielniach produkcyjnych na Kubie

The paper presents the results of the bi-lateral research project entitled Cooperativization of Cuban Agriculture: The role of Agricultural Production Cooperatives in organization of rural communities and rural space, carried out by the Department of Latin America of the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, Warsaw University, together with Faculty of Geography of Havana University, in the years 1987-1990. The field studies, in which both authors participated, were realized in about 60 agriculture production cooperatives (Cooperativas de producctión agropecuaria, CPA) located in vańous regions of Cuba. They consisted in interviews with cooperative's authorities as well as with cooperative's members. In the paper the basic informations about the place of CPAs in the Cuban agriculture, the organization of economic activity as well as the settlements of cooperatives were presented in order to introduce the main problem. The analysis of living condictions in the CPAs has been based on the results of 225 interviews with cooperative's members. It consists of description of dwelling conditions, equipments of cooperatives members houses, the structure of family expendintures and the mode of nutrition and, last but not least, the discussion on some aspects of social, political and cultural behaviours of cooperative's families. The majority of cooperative's members evaluated their present situation as better then before the incorporation to the CPAs, mainly due to better dwelling conditions, communications facilities and more technical and social infrastructure in cooperative settlements. The CPA are offering the same privileges which obtain the workers of public sector, but the economic and social behaviours of the former have still preserved many characteristics of the peasant agriculture. But it is obvious thai CPAs created by Cuban authorities are one of the media of the process of the State control and ideological penetration of the Cuban rural areas.