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ANALYSIS-Russian base pullout ends Cold War chapter in Cuba
By Isabel Garcia-Zarza

HAVANA, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Russia's imminent withdrawal from a contentious spy base it has operated in communist-run Cuba for nearly four decades will end one of the Cold War's most emblematic alliances.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week the Russian military would pull its personnel from the Lourdes intelligence center outside Havana -- a mass of antennae and radars in a compound largely hidden by tropical vegetation.

"We knew there were still Russian soldiers here, but not that such an important base existed," said a young Cuban engineer called Boris, a common name on the island where past Russian links have left plenty of Vladimirs and Lenins too.

Like Boris, the first many Cubans had heard about the secretive Lourdes base was their government's angry public response to Putin's announcement in state-run media.

The 1,500 Russian military personnel and their relatives at Lourdes are all that is left of the once massive, 20,000-strong presence during the alliance of the old Soviet Union and President Fidel Castro's fellow socialist Cuba.

Putin's visit to Cuba last December, which some had cast as an attempt to revitalize relations, failed to achieve anything concrete and with hindsight looks more like a farewell trip.

Hot on the heels of Putin came Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who signed numerous economic accords with the Castro government to push along an apparently blossoming relationship. Throughout this year, there have been numerous military, cultural and economic exchanges, and Chinese products are starting to proliferate in Cuban stores.

"Before, we had the Russians. Now the Chinese are arriving," said a young Cuban, contemplating piles of Chinese Panda TV sets in a Havana electrical store.

In the wake of the Russian announcement over Lourdes, some analysts even speculated that the Chinese could help Cuba maintain the base, which lies just 90 miles (144 km) off U.S. soil, if Havana wants to keep it operating.

The growing Chinese presence, however, will not immediately erase the marks of Soviet influence, including thousands of Moskvichs and Ladas still beetling round the Caribbean island in varying states of repair. Much machinery, including for lorries and planes, is Soviet-made and dependent on Moscow for repairs.

Perhaps the most visible monument to the former Soviet-Cuban alliance, however, is the imposing Russian Embassy whose 20-story, rocket-shaped central block towers over Havana's grandest boulevard, Fifth Avenue, like a set from a sci-fi movie.

NEAR-EMPTY RUSSIAN EMBASSY

Once home to hundreds of diplomats, now just a few remaining permanent Russian stuff shuffle around the enormous marble salons, and many parts are kept closed.

Other testimonies to a relationship abruptly broken by the Soviet collapse of a decade ago are three large unfinished joint venture projects: the Juragua nuclear plant, the Cienfuegos oil refinery and the Las Camariocas nickel plant.

When the Russians leave Lourdes, the most important tenet of Moscow-Havana relations will be economic, including the exchange of Cuban sugar for Russian oil and the thorny issue of a pending Soviet-era debt Moscow puts as high as $20 billion.

Cuba, which still regards the Soviet collapse bitterly as a "betrayal," argues that the damages this caused the island's Socialist bloc-oriented economy were equal to the debt.

And Cuba is still officially in what the government euphemistically calls the "Special Period," the economic crisis sparked here by the Soviet collapse.

Russia's decision to leave Lourdes seals a change of strategy by Moscow, which no longer regards spying on the United S2tates as a priority, would rather save the $200 million annual rent to Havana, and clearly does not mind risking offending Castro.

But even as Putin warms up to the United States, so Cuba's Cold War enmity with "the northern enemy" continues.

The government of Castro, who took Cuba into a close relationship with the Soviet Union after his 1959 revolution, reacted with indignation to Putin's Lourdes decision, saying it was not in agreement, and closure of the base would represent a "grave risk" to its security.

"Cuba was benefiting with part of the information acquired relative to the security of our homeland," said a Cuban government communique, which also said that "the U.S. aggressive and warlike policy is stronger than ever" at the moment.

In the reshaping of international alliances and strategies after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the role of Cuba, still proclaiming it will defend socialism "to the death," appears somewhat relegated, as illustrated by the Lourdes pullout, some political analysts and Castro critics say.

"The Cuban government must draw its own conclusions since, as well as losing this important source of revenue (the Lourdes rent), from now on, its international isolation could be greater," dissident journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe wrote.