Along with most American influences—such as Santa Claus, who had been banned—the learning of English was now discouraged. Russian was the second language to learn in the “new” Cuba. Che began taking twice-weekly Russian-language classes from Yuri Pevtsov, a philologist sent from Lermonstov University to be his interpreter and personal tutor. They had no Russian-Spanish manual to work from, so the two made do with a Russian-French primer.
