In this groundbreaking study, Janusz Bugajski evaluates the impact of Sandinista political, economic, and social programs. The book focuses on the confrontations between the regime and Nicaragua's rural population, particularly the Ladino peasantry and the Indian and black indigenous minorities of the Atlantic coast region. The book concentrates on the Sandinista's agrarian strategies in order to distinguish between short-term policies and long-term programs. It addresses the question of whether any durable and novel ideological, political, and economic elements have been introduced in Nicaragua in terms of Marxist-Leninist models of state socialism--expecially vis-a-vis peasantry and the country's ethnic minorities. Upon seizing power in July 1979, the Sandinistas embarked on a socialist transformation of Nicaraguan society. This book concludes that in confronting major internal and external obstacles, the regime opted for a degree of economic flexibility without abandoning its long-term political objectives. The regime's Leninist political arrangements, claims Bugajski, were therefore combined with a quasi-Communist economic program. The Sandinistas captured and remodeled all levers of social control, including the state apparatus, the armed forces, and the security network, and fortified those mechanisms that could most effectively extend their domination. But in order to minimize economic dislocation, political opposition, and social unrest, to uphold productivity, to obtain vital agro-export revenues, and to prevent international isolation, Managua implemented a transitory mixed economy and continued to tolerate a politically weakened private sector.

The authors convincingly argue that the democratic tradition and practice that was emerging in Socialist Nicaragua could well have served as a model for other Third World states. After showing why participating democracy didn't triumph, they conclude with an assessment of the 1990 elections and their impact on the future of democracy in Nicaragua. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This volume is a valuable re-assessment of the Nicaraguan Revolution by a Marxist historian of Latin American political history. It shows that the FSLN (‘the Sandinistas’), with politics principally shaped by Soviet and Cuban Communism, never had a commitment to genuine democracy either within the revolutionary movement or within society at large; that the FSLN’s lack of commitment to democracy was a key factor in the way that revolution was betrayed from the 1970s to the 1990s; and that the FSLN’s lack of rank-and-file democracy left all decision-making to the National Directorate and ultimately placed that power in the hands of Daniel Ortega. Pursuing his narrative into the present, La Botz shows that, once their would-be bureaucratic ruling class project was defeated, Ortega and the FSLN leadership turned to an alliance with the capitalist class.

From the John Holmes Library Collection.

In this groundbreaking study, Janusz Bugajski evaluates the impact of Sandinista political, economic, and social programs. The book focuses on the confrontations between the regime and Nicaragua's rural population, particularly the Ladino peasantry and the Indian and black indigenous minorities of the Atlantic coast region. The book concentrates on the Sandinista's agrarian strategies in order to distinguish between short-term policies and long-term programs. It addresses the question of whether any durable and novel ideological, political, and economic elements have been introduced in Nicaragua in terms of Marxist-Leninist models of state socialism--expecially vis-a-vis peasantry and the country's ethnic minorities. Upon seizing power in July 1979, the Sandinistas embarked on a socialist transformation of Nicaraguan society. This book concludes that in confronting major internal and external obstacles, the regime opted for a degree of economic flexibility without abandoning its long-term political objectives. The regime's Leninist political arrangements, claims Bugajski, were therefore combined with a quasi-Communist economic program. The Sandinistas captured and remodeled all levers of social control, including the state apparatus, the armed forces, and the security network, and fortified those mechanisms that could most effectively extend their domination. But in order to minimize economic dislocation, political opposition, and social unrest, to uphold productivity, to obtain vital agro-export revenues, and to prevent international isolation, Managua implemented a transitory mixed economy and continued to tolerate a politically weakened private sector.