This overview of modern Cuban history focuses on the country's post-Soviet economic collapse, the measures that President Castro's government took in response, and their ensuing results and impact. It neither paints Cuba as a perfect society nor universal model for Third World development. But it does show that Cuba demonstrates that even relatively small countries can pursue a path of economic and social development while avoiding the problems endemic in the rest of Latin America. The author argues that the country's political stability is not merely the result of authoritarianism, but that the Cuban political system incorporates important elements of democracy that encourage participation and help generate public support. Cuba today continues to have huge problems, but the wider significance of the Cuban Revolution rests on its practical demonstration that it is possible to pursue radical and humane development policies which are at complete variance with the increasingly criticized nostrums of neoliberal economics being foisted on the rest of the world.