Soon after the Revolution, Cuba and the United States disagreed and the Soviet Union stepped in. Cuba became a communist state and relied heavily on the Soviet Union. The United States retaliated with an economic embargo that prohibited trade between Cuba and the United States. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba for the first time became a truly free nation, not dependent on any other country. But the lack of Soviet economic support and the tightening of the U. S. embargo in the 1990s have made life very tough for most Cubans. The United States Cuba's economy. memorialized
supplemented
inhibited
reproduced