Sandinistas

...now many are starving, and it is dismaying to witness not only the begging children in the streets but the infants dying of malnutrition and an epidemic of diarrhea...

...Anti-Yankee nationalists, they seek an accommodation with Washington and negotiate with" the contras "whom they previously described as Washington's mercenaries...

...I question his claim that only "the conservative privileged classes" identify with the cardinal, and that the Nicaraguan bishops "forgot their own admonition to see the world from the perspective of the poor...

...The immaturity of Nicaraguan society requires a two-stage revolution...

...Much of the middle and professional class-whose skills the revolution needs more than ever to achieve its social goals-have despaired of life under the Sandinistas and have fled Nicaragua, thousands of them pouring with poor Nicaraguans across the border of Texas in the last several months...

...I found Mr...

...Gilbert argues that in the decade since they seized power, multiple contradictions imposed by experience and reality have rendered the Sandinistas more flexible if not more soft...

...aggression is responsible for much of Nicaragua's misery...

...The gradualist character of this conception reinforces the need for a vanguard to guide the country through a complicated process of historical change....Lenin echoes in the Sandinista description of the vanguard as 'the leader of the class struggle.' But there is something more heroic and passionate-echoes of Sandi-no-in the Sandinista vision of a 'few men and women who at a given moment in their history seem to contain within themselves the dignity of all the people.'" Mr...

...imperialism...

...He seems to recognize that, whatever concessions the Sandinistas might make toward democracy, they will never share control of the army and the police and thus never effectively share power...

...Thus the Sandinistas broadened the definition of the class basis of revolution and emphasized their own vanguard role, with particular power for the nine commanders of the National Directorate...

...And though he alludes repeatedly to Sandinista mistakes, I miss in Mr...

...Undeniably, the U.S...

...Over the years, we might nudge them as best we can toward evolutionary Marxism on the model, say, . of Hungary...

...Gilbert's chapter on "The Church and the Revolution" less convincing...

...Theoretically the economy remained "mixed" but in practice the revolution "curbed managerial freedom to set prices, lower or raise wages, fire workers, buy raw materials, redeploy capital, obtain credit, or buy foreign exchange...

...Gilbert seems confident that the Sandinista vanguard will rise to the challenge and become more open, democratic, and practical...

...aggression...

...Certainly he is honest as he concedes the major role of Sandinista errors and mismanagement in the collapse of the economy and does not seek to blame all of the Nicaraguan people's suffering on the U.S...

...Gilbert is, of course, entirely correct in proposing a peaceful accommodation between the Sandinistas and the United States...

...In December, President Daniel Ortega told the New York Times that inflation in 1988 was "about 20,000 percent...

...Formerly Nicaraguans were hungry...

...On the contrary, as the economic chaos of the revolution has increased, not only have the poor filled the official churches, the cardinal has become a voice of the poor as he battled the revolution...

...But Sandinista policy is equally if not more to blame, and one has only to visit Nicaragua to see the evidence...

...Private participation in the economy was...declining through expropriation and the shrinking private contribution to new investment...

...It was the cardinal, after all, who first brought the Sandinistas and the contras to the negotiating table...

...The Sandinistas adapted Marx's and Lenin's theories to Nicaragua's indigenous conditions, so enfeebled by U.S...

...His chapters on the bourgeoisie and on Sandinista agrarian policy are abundantly informative and valuable...

...In agriculture, despite some marginal benefits to the rural population, and for all the Sandinistas' "revolutionary romanticism," by 1984 agrarian reform had "barely touched the needs of the rural poor" and production of food has continued until now to decline disastrously...

...He acted not simply from anti-Marxism but from sorrow for the destitution the Sandinistas were imposing on Nicaragua...

...Upwards of six thousand people (not counting former National Guardsmen), many accused of collaborating with the contras, remain political prisoners...

...Having mastered the immense literature in Spanish and English, Mr...

...Though he admits that the following of the "popular church" is minuscule, he seems to favor the Sandinistas in their confrontation with Cardinal Obando and the official church...

...For tactical reasons, the Sandinistas allied themselves with the bourgeoisie to overthrow Somoza, then with victory pushed the bourgeoisie aside as they consolidated state power in their own hands...

...Because the Nicaraguan peasants and workers were ideologically backward, no socialist transformation was possible without an elite of professional revolutionaries...

...His refusal to condemn the contras-no matter the anathemas of the religious left in Nicaragua and the United States-in retrospect was a shrewd strategy because it enabled him to maintain his historic role as mediator of Nicaragua's quarrels...

...Gilbert promises to be "as objective as I know how...

...A second image begins to emerge: a party of pragmatists, sometimes stubborn but finally open to compromise...

...To achieve permanent peace, aside from negotiating external security problems, the United States will have to allow the Sandinistas to keep their revolution inside Nicaragua...

...The author adroitly guides us through the tormented relations between the vanguard and the merchant class...

...He writes that "Lenin's conception of a vanguard party probably did more than any other Marxist idea to shape the FSLN [Sandinista Front...

...Despite the truce with the contras, the Sandinista army has increased, pfft ducingnothing, while consuming 62percent of the nation's resources...

...This ©vet1 riding fact-a hundred thousand men or more under arms, with as many in reserve-negates the Sandinistas' other impulses toward pragmatism...

...On my fourth lengthy visit there last summer, I was astonished at the deterioration of life, which in 1986 I was convinced could hardly deteriorate further...

...I am more skeptical, but-for the sake of the Nicaraguan people-I can only pray that he is right...

...Edward R. F. Sheehan Early in this interesting and useful book, Dennis Gilbert explains the theory of the Sandinista "vanguard...

...This helpful book on Sandinista theory and practice should be read in tandem with David Nolan's more cynical, brilliantly analytical and illustrative FSLN: The Ideology of the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan Revolution (University of Miami, 1984...

...Gilbert's book any vivid sense of Nicaragua's desperation after a decade of revolutionary disaster...