Perhaps few individuals have had more premature obituaries written than Fidel Castro. In the same way wishful thinking about the future of Cuba has likewise been in exuberant abundance. Since no one lives forever, one day, maybe even shortly, the obituaries will have a place and history will judge Fidel and Raul Castro as well as their revolution of the past 50 years. Hopefully, the reality of change will be better appreciated than the wild predictions and irrational responses that the Cuban revolution has evoked so far.

Evaluating the Cuban revolution is no easy matter. No revolution anywhere followed a predictable course. Indeed, in the seven great modern revolutions after the 18th century – in the USA, France, Haiti, Mexico, Russia, China and Cuba – the courses have been erratic and effervescent with the post-revolutionary societies swinging like a pendulum to settle eventually at some almost familiar pre-revolutionary norm. A common mistake with many analyses of the Cuban revolution was to freeze it at some particular moment or to see each major national crisis as the beginning of expected doom.

The varying ill-defined stages of the Cuban revolution after 1959 provided many opportunities for erroneous predictions. The first two years of institutional reconstruction were not easy. The attempts by the USA to overthrow the government at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 or at the missile crisis of October 1962 were fraught with peril for the Cuban government. Moreover, the imposition of an embargo in 1960 and continuing attempts to assassinate the elder Castro represented continuously hostile hazards from a major power against a small neighbouring state.

Having survived the early 1960s, there were three critical periods for Castro and his revolution. The first was the failure to produce the much-vaunted 10 million tonnes of sugar in 1970 after mobilising the entire country for more than two years. The consequence was the establishment of an orthodox socialist state more subordinate to the Soviet Union than the Cubans had anticipated in the 1960s. At that time their idealistic revolutionary impulse was for a neutral state between the two great powers. The second critical period came in 1980 with the alarming wake-up call produced by the unexpected Mariel exodus in 1980. Most critical of all was the surprisingly rapid collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that left Cuba in the lurch. Cuba recovered from all three crises. The most critical was what the government called a Special Period in Time of Peace to overcome the challenges of the 1990s.

Castro and the Cubans have been both innovative and resilient during the past 50 years. There is no reason to see why the state could not survive well in a future without the Castro brothers. Coping with problems generated either domestically or from the outside has been a continuous Cuban experience. This partly explains why Fidel Castro could astonish Cuba watchers by handing over the government to his slightly younger brother Raul. Raul even purged his government of many of Fidel’s appointees in March 2008 with minimal disruption to the orderly running of the government.

Cuba will certainly be different without the Castro brothers in control. How different will depend on the nature of the transition. A post-Castro state will arrive either abruptly or gradually. In either case, however, the changes will not be total. There will be no restoration of some status quo ante as so many Cuban Americans in the USA have been hoping for decades. Just as in Haiti, France, Mexico, Russia, or China after their great revolutions petered out, many recognisable features of the pre-revolutionary society will emerge. Nevertheless the operational conditions will be fundamentally changed. Cuba will change, but not abandon some aspects of the socialist society.

The great Cuban revolutionary achievements in public health, education and in collective consciousness will surely survive. The revolution constructed hundreds of hospitals across the island and established the finest preventative medical operation in the world. Cubans today enjoy accessible public health as a common right. It is unlikely that such access will be restricted as it was before 1959. The educational system created open opportunities for all and eventually gave Cuba the most highly qualified cadre of workers anywhere across the Caribbean. This Cuban workforce will be enormously competitive in a post-Castro world, regardless of the general state of the world economy.

There will undoubtedly be many dramatic changes in Cuba after the demise of the Castro brothers. The way the state is administered will obviously change. While authoritarianism has brought many benefits to Cubans, there is a pent-up desire for individual freedom that will manifest itself sooner or later. The military will lose its hegemony along with its special privileges and quickly fade away as it did when Fulgencio Batista fled the country in 1959. Without an organised army, some degree of chaos on the local scene may be expected. In that respect Cuba might resemble any other Caribbean state in terms of civil disorder.

Of course, the USA will play a role in the way that Cuba transitions toward its post-Castro future. If it modifies the embargo or returns Guantánamo Bay to Cuba before Raul leaves office, that would greatly facilitate the rapid restoration of the Cuban economy as well as impact civil society. Cubans and Cuban-Americans would be able to resolve their differences within a context of international law. Havana and Miami might even realise more rapidly their destiny to become twin cities like Baltimore and Washington or Minneapolis and St Paul. Millions of Americans will flock to Cuba when the legal restraints are removed. That will be a boon for the Cuban tourist economy and the general Cuban society. The immediate impact on the rest of the Caribbean may be negatively extensive.

The Cuban scenario after the Castro brothers will not necessarily conform to any of the present predictions. It will be yet another change in a country that has seen so many dramatic changes since 1959. History, after all, is about change.