RONALD RADOSH
71
force legitimizing totalitarianism, and the Sandinistas saw them as
an obstacle to consolidation of power. Though the goal of the FSLN
commandantes
was a Soviet style state , to this day, when asked whether
they are Marxists, even the most hardline Stalinists in the leadership
offer evasive answers and talk of their Christian orientation and their
pragmatism. Thus Bayardo Arce, whom Christian correctly calls "the
commandante
most concerned with matters of ideology and creation of
the Leninist structure in Nicaragua," gave a secret speech before the
1985 elections, in which he proclaimed the elections as "bothersome,"
since the real goals of the Revolution were "the power to enforce ...
precisely what constitutes the defense of the dictatorship of the prole–
tariat." Arce went on to announce that they would never abandon
their "strategic links with the Soviet Union" or agree to develop what
he derided as "bourgeois democracy." Eventually, he told his Marxist
audience, they would eliminate this "facade of pluralism," when its
usefulness came to an end . Yet it was this same Arce who, in an in–
terview with Diedre English, in a special Nicaragua issue of
Mother
Jones,
told his willing listener that Sandinismo was so pragmatic that
it could at once be called Marxist-Leninist, Christian and liberal,
and that he wished "to include the methods of the U.S. electoral sys–
tem the next time we have elections." A reporter who had read Chris–
tian's book beforehand, one would hope, would have known not to
ask Bayardo Arce about what the ideology of the FSLN leaders is.
Moreover, Christian's book touches upon the often stated belief
that the Sandinistas were pushed into Soviet hands and towards in–
ternal repression by the aggressive policy of the United States . The
harsh United States stance under Reagan certainly allowed the San–
dinistas internal leverage to move in the direction their leaders al–
ready desired - feeding into the hands of the toughest hard-liners in
Managua, but it is clear that their goals were set from the start.
Christian shows that the very first Cuban military and Bulgarian
and East German economic and state security advisors arrived in
Managua the first week of the Revolution. As for the United States,
the Carter administration and Ambassador Lawrence Pezzullo in
particular offered a welcome hand to the new Revolution. She quotes
Pezullo: "You either took a positive position of trying to be helpful and
trying to build a new relationship or you'd be sitting around wringing
your hands forever." What Pezullo did was to befriend the Sandinista
leaders, in particular agricultural minister Jaime Wheelock. While
the Sandinistas were beginning to make "the United States the main
culprit for everything that they found wrong with the world," the
