ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the theoretical issues and generalities about revolutions to bear brief review for the Nicaraguan case. As a great debate rages abroad about the Nicaraguan revolution's significance, the people and the leaders of Nicaragua itself worry much less about meaning than about managing to persevere and to recover. Catalysts or accelerators of the Nicaraguan revolution appear to have varied according to the sector participating. The earliest entrants in the anti-Somoza struggle were moved by different events than were those who joined later. In June 1979, the coercive balance shifted definitively to favor the insurgents, and their victory became inevitable, retarded only by the diplomatic delaying game played by the United States in a last effort to alter the makeup of the new government. Mass involvement appears to have been quite high by the standards of most other revolutions— probably on a par with the Mexican revolution and clearly higher than in Cuba and Bolivia.
