ABSTRACT
The importance of taking into account the particularities of each country in the construction of socialism is stressed by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, one of the leaders of the Cuban Communist Party, in his lengthy essay entitled Cuba in the Transition to Socialism, 1959-1963. Rodriguez's definition of the transition period commences with the overthrow of the capitalist state and extends to the completion of socialism. According to Charles Bettelheim, a genuine transition to socialism also requires certain political and ideological conditions and a conjuncture of internal and international contradictions that enable a society to do without the further development of capitalism and to "pass directly to the building of socialism". Although the Sandinista revolutionary regime did not undertake the construction of socialism in Nicaragua, the revolutionary process inspired a great deal of interest in the transition to socialism among leftist circles.
