While analysts abroad speculated about the possible effects of Mr. Castro’s death on Cuba’s domestic and foreign policy, Cuban citizens appeared to keep expectations in check, perhaps because hopes for speedy improvements at other historic junctures, like the re-establishing of diplomatic relations with the United States in 2014, had gone unrealized for most people.

The government harnessed Mr. Castro’s death to reaffirm its socialist program, urging people to honor his legacy by redoubling their commitment to the ideals he espoused and the country he built. The government even placed logbooks in schools and other locations throughout the country and invited Cubans to sign an oath of loyalty to the revolution’s ideals.

“This is undefeated Fidel, who summons us with his example and with the demonstration that, yes, we could; yes, we can; and, yes, we will be able to overcome any obstacle, threat or turmoil in our firm commitment to build socialism in Cuba,” Raúl Castro, the president, said during an address to a large gathering in Santiago on Saturday night.

The public events during the mourning period, as expected, drew vast, yet restrained, crowds. Perhaps the most dramatic homage was a three-day cortege that carried Mr. Castro’s ashes hundreds of miles to Santiago from Havana, reversing the route that he and his guerrillas took after overthrowing the forces of Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

Hundreds of thousands of people lined the route, with some traveling long distances and many hours for a glimpse of the modest convoy and the small, flag-draped wooden box containing Mr. Castro’s ashes, which sat in a glass case on a trailer hitched to a military jeep.

Esteban Caraballo, 63, a maintenance worker at an agricultural studies institute, rode in a caravan of 36 buses that his town had provided to carry spectators to the cortege route. They were waiting roadside at a spot east of Havana by 2 a.m. one day last week, even though the cortege was not expected to arrive until after 8 a.m. People held small plastic Cuban flags on wooden sticks or clutched images of Mr. Castro to their chests.