Gwynne Dyer, Contributor

FOR ANYONE who knew the old Soviet Union, a visit to Cuba is always a trip down memory lane. From the ubiquitous revolutionary slogans and the absence of advertising to the cautious shorthand in conversation (stroking the chin means Fidel Castro) and the sour, fatalistic jokes, it is a communist country of the classic era. But this time, I kept thinking about an old Soviet joke that had not made it to Cuba (though I have now done my best to get it started there).

The question in Cuba is: What will happen if Fidel comes back? It's eight months since he fell gravely ill and handed the president's powers over to his brother Raul, and the 'transition' is complete. Fidel's long illness created the ideal circum-stances for an orderly hand-over of power, and by the end of last year, the new collective leadership was firmly in charge. Most people were quietly relieved that it was all over.

It felt a bit strange no longer having Fidel on TV all the time nagging and exhorting the population, a larger-than-life father figure, but after 47 years of that most people were very tired of being treated as backward children. There was enormous respect for Fidel in Cuba, but there was also enormous weariness with him, combined with a great secret fear of what would happen when he finally went.

Partly it was just fear of the unknown - 80 per cent of Cuba's population have known no other leader - but it was also fear of chaos, because everybody knew that the United States would use Castro's death to try to change the regime.

Even Cubans who don't like Castro don't want abrupt politica collapse and perhaps great violence. Neither do they believe that life would necessarily be better for the people who live in Cuba now if all those Cuban refugees in Miami and all of their money suddenly flooded back.

Collective leadership

They'd just buy up the island and take over again. So, a smooth transition to the next generation of the communist leadership now is better than the chaos that would have followed if Fidel had just died suddenly one day.

The new leadership is collective, with brother Raul out front as chairman of the board. Its members are well known and respected by the Cuban public - people suchas Felipe Perez Roque, the foreign minister, Ricardo Alarcon, head of the National Assembly, Ricardo Lage, now in charge of energy, and Francisco Soberon, governor of the Central Bank - and they can expect a couple of years' grace to show that they can grow the economy faster and give Cubans more freedom without destroying the welfare state that gives people free education and health care.

Or rather, they did expect a couple of years' grace, but then Fidel started to get better. He is still far from fit, but he is out of bed and on the phone, and the spectre looms that he might decide he is well enough to take over again.

Disaster for the regime

"(Fidel cannot participate in decision-making) the same way he did before, because he has to dedicate a good part of his time to recuperating physically," said Ricardo Alarcon, last week. "To what extent he will go back to doing things the way he did, the way he is accustomed to, it's up to him." And it really is up to him. Fidel Castro so dominates modern Cuban history, and the reflex respect that all his colleagues feel towards him is so deep, that nobody would tell him he can't take back supreme power.

But it would be a disaster for the regime. Many Cubans revere Fidel, but few want him back in power, jerking them around again with his constant, arbitrary changes of policy. Moreover, the odds are very much against another smooth transition of power sometime in the future, when death finally takes Fidel. Miracles happen, but not with any regularity.