MOSCOW — Move over, Miami: The newest hotbed of Cuban dissident activity is the longtime capital of world communism.

Cubans who were sent to Moscow to become the ideological and technical cadre of Fidel Castro's regime ended up catching democratic fever as they watched Russia reject communism. Now as many as 500 Cubans living in the former Soviet Union are refusing to return to Cuba.

One hundred of them have banded together in a dissident group called Union Cubana to try to fight the Castro regime by publishing a newspaper and smuggling copies into Cuba, demonstrating at the Cuban Embassy in Moscow and helping their countrymen escape from Cuba via Russia.

A front-page political cartoon in Cubinex, Union Cubana's publication, shows a frightened Castro falling toward a stake: "Miami-Madrid-Moscow are the obstacle that Castro trips on to impale himself on the dagger prepared by the internal resistance."

Castro's feelings for the Moscow dissidents are not any warmer. He calls them "Red worms," a variation of his name for Miami Cubans, "worms."

Now the "Red worms" and the "worms" have gotten together to help 300 Cubans living in the former Soviet Union emigrate to the United States.

By agreeing to pay for the refugees' resettlement, the Cuban American National Foundation struck a deal with officials in Washington to raise the quota of Cubans allowed to emigrate to America this year.

The Union Cubana spread the word to Cubans across the former Soviet Union, many of whom are living here illegally. An official from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service has visited Moscow to interview the Cubans; those accepted will leave within two months, said Joe Coleman, a State Department official acquainted with the deal.

Cubans from third countries like Argentina and Spain have emigrated to the United States but never from as far away as Russia.

Not all of the applicants are students sent to the old Soviet Union by Castro.

Juan Carlos Bencono, 35, a factory manager, and his wife were fired from jobs in Havana and repeatedly harassed after he told a foreign television news team what he thought of Castro. "I decided to tell the truth, that it only appears that everyone in the country is in accord with Fidel. In reality, everyone is against him," Bencono said.