Assimilation and rejection of the Soviet heritage in the identity construction of post-Soviet Cuban generation: the case of nostalgia for Soviet cartoons (muñequitos rusos) in Cuba

Abstract

This thesis explores nostalgia in the discourses surrounding Soviet cartoons—popularly remembered in Cuba as muñequitos rusos—and their role in contemporary Cuban identity construction. Using a qualitative interpretive approach, the study analyzes a corpus of newspaper articles and Facebook user comments published between 2013 and 2025. The analysis combines thematic, discursive, and narrative methods, allowing us to map the tension between "top-down" and "bottom-up" discourses to examine how post-Soviet Cuban identity is constructed. The findings demonstrate that the Soviet legacy—illustrated through nostalgic references to the muñequitos rusos—occupies an ambivalent position in the construction of post-Soviet Cuban identity, situated between acceptance and rejection, and marked by humor (Cuban choteo), criticism, aesthetics, and everyday reinterpretation. At the same time, the Cuban case reveals the importance of generational silence: younger Cuban generations construct their identities in contexts where the celebration of Soviet heritage no longer plays a central role. For them, nostalgia for muñequitos rusos appears primarily as commodified or ironic aesthetic references, rather than vehicles for restoring the past. In this sense, nostalgia in Cuba for the Soviet heritage emerges as a reflexive, commodified cultural practice, criticized through censorship, humor, and everyday economic precariousness, as well as entering dialogue and dispute with other heritages that continue to participate in contemporary Cuban identity-building processes.