The Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) provides a good example of the pervasive influence of the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Fidel Castro (b. 1926) and his fellow revolutionaries did not set out to create a Communist state. They wanted to level the economic playing field, but this desire was not driven by ideology or pursued in concert with the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, when the revolution finally succeeded in toppling the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973), the United States, acting on Cold War imperatives, immediately launched a campaign to undermine the new government and depose Castro. These policies gave Castro little choice but to form an alliance with the Soviet Union, an alliance that only grew stronger over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. This photograph of Fidel Castro embracing East German leader Erich Honecker (1912–1994) illustrates the close ties that had developed by the mid-1970s between the Soviet Union and Cuba.