Roses and medals serve as a base for a portrait of the late Fidel Castro at Revolution Plaza in Havana on Monday, and President Obama. (Photos: Ramon Espinosa/AP, Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)

Cuban-American lawmakers have denounced President Obama’s tepid statement about the death of Fidel Castro, accusing the White House of whitewashing decades of human rights abuses. But Obama’s reaction fits a modern tradition of American presidents playing down, or entirely ignoring, those sorts of criticisms when responding to a foreign leader’s passing.

Obama’s statement alluded to “the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation,” and predicted that “history will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.” There were no references to longstanding U.S. condemnations of Havana’s record on political, economic and religious rights.

This isn’t uncommon.

When Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, the United States lost a vital World War II ally turned ruthless Cold War enemy. President Dwight Eisenhower’s remarkably terse official condolence statement made no mention of life behind the Iron Curtain or of USSR expansionism.

“The Government of the United States tenders its official condolences to the Government of the U.S.S.R. on the death of Generalissimo Joseph Stalin, Prime Minister of the Soviet Union,” it said.

The new leaders of the Soviet Union act as pallbearers as they carry the casket of Joseph Stalin in Moscow on March 9, 1953, and President Dwight Eisenhower. (Photos: AP, George Skadding/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) More

(Ike delivered a fuller appreciation for what Stalin’s death meant in a famous speech to newspaper editors on April 16, 1953 — indicting the Soviets but also challenging Moscow’s new leaders to help defuse Cold War tensions and bemoaning military spending. The remarks were titled “The Chance for Peace.”)

When Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh died on Sept. 2, 1969, President Richard Nixon did not dwell on the tens of thousands of Americans killed by Communist forces in the Vietnam War. Instead, at a press conference on Sept. 26, he mused that the revolutionary leader’s death might lead down a new path in bilateral relations.

“Looking to the future, as new leaders emerge, as they look at the consequences of past policy and the prospects for future policy, and as long as the United States holds to its course, I think the prospects for a possible change are there,” Nixon told reporters. “I am not predicting it. I am not trying to raise false hopes. I am only suggesting that since there is new leadership, we can expect perhaps some reevaluation of policy.”

When Mao Zedong died in September 1976, President Gerald Ford did not note the tens of millions who suffered under the Chinese leader’s rule, either in deadly famines resulting from his economic policies or in “Cultural Revolution” purges.

“Chairman Mao was a giant figure in modern Chinese history,” Ford said, in language remarkably similar to Obama’s statement on Castro. “He was a leader whose actions profoundly affected the development of his own country. His influence on history will extend far beyond the borders of China.”

Ford noted that Mao and Nixon had worked “to end a generation of hostility and to launch a new and more positive era in relations between our two countries” and declared, “I am confident that the trend of improved relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States, which Chairman Mao helped to create, will continue to contribute to world peace and stability.”

Communist Party leaders help carry the coffin of Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow on Nov. 15, 1982, and President Ronald Reagan. (Photos: Boris Yurchenko/AP, Bettman via Getty Images) More

Ronald Reagan’s uncompromising criticisms of the Soviet Union are legendary. But there’s no reference to the “Evil Empire” in the White House’s November 1982 statement on the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

“The President is expressing his personal condolences to Mr. Kuznetsov, First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., on the death of Soviet President Brezhnev. A high-level delegation will represent the United States at the memorial ceremonies in Moscow,” the statement said.