Fidel obviously feared the Soviet kiss

I think Ernie Mendoza's Cuban journalist may have had it slightly wrong on why Fidel Castro was puffing a cigar when he stepped off his plane in Moscow in 1963. Fidel, like most male Latin Americans, was a great bear-hugger himself and happily embraced Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev at every encounter. What the very macho Castro obviously did not relish was the full mouth-to-mouth kiss favoured by the Soviet leaders (until Gorbachev) and their East European acolytes. ■