After the establishment of diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military aid and was an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1972 Cuba joined the COMECON, an economic organization of states designed to create co-operation among the communist planned economies, which was dominated by its largest economy, the Soviet Union. Moscow kept in regular contact with Havana and shared varying close relations until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Cuba then entered an era of serious economic hardship, the Special Period. History Relations before Cuban Revolution The first diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba developed during World War II. Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, set up the first Soviet embassy in Havana in 1943, and Cuban diplomats under the auspices of President Fulgencio Batista visited Moscow the same year. The Soviets then made a number of contacts with the communist Popular Socialist Party, who had a foothold in Batista's governing Democratic Socialist Coalition. Litvinov's successor, Andrei Gromyko, became the ambassador to both the US and Cuba but never visited the latter during his tenure. After the war, the governments of Ramón Grau and Carlos Prío Socarrás sought to isolate the Cuban Communist Party, and relations with the Soviet Union were abandoned. Batista's return to power in a 1952 coup saw the closure of the embassy. After the revolution The Cuban Revolution propelled Fidel Castro to power on January 1, 1959, but initially attracted little attention in Moscow. Soviet planners, resigned to US dominance over the Western Hemisphere, were unprepared for the possibility of a future ally in the region. According to later testimonies from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, neither the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee nor KGB intelligence had any idea who Castro was or what he was fighting for. Khrushchev advised them to consult Cuban communists, who reported that Castro was a representative of the "haute bourgeoisie" and working for the Central Intelligence Agency. In February 1960, Khrushchev sent his deputy, Anastas Mikoyan, to Cuba to discover what motivated Castro, who had returned from failed trip to Washington, DC, where he was refused a meeting with US President Dwight Eisenhower. According to reports, Khrushchev's aides had initially tried to characterize Castro as an untrustworthy American agent. Mikoyan returned from Cuba with the opinion