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be a more recent and undiagnosed condition. While some teachers and
parents are working hard to liberate minority children from the bigot-in–
spired ethnic self-hatred that impairs their development into emotionally
hale people, others are already at work laying on majority kids an egg–
head-inspired species self-hatred.
GUNTHER STENT
Nicaraguan Conflicts
THE CIVIL WAR IN NICARAGUA: INSIDE THE SANDINISTAS. By
Roger Miranda and William Ratliff. Transaction Publishers. $34.95.
The Nicaraguan civil war of the 1980s was among the most contro–
versial chapters of the late twentiethth century, with ramifications of spe–
cial importance for the United States. It came close to the Vietnam War
in provoking sharp divisions of opinion among both the public and policy
makers. Along with Afghanistan's civil war, it was the last major Cold
War confrontation between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. Yet
notwithstanding the passionate intensity of these debates during the 1980s,
by the early 1990s - with the civil war over and the Sandinistas
(seemingly) out of power - Americans, whatever their political persua–
sion, had ceased to pay attention to Nicaragua and its problems.
From an historical point of view, the Sandinista regime represented
the last attempt to install and perpetuate a pro-Soviet, pro-Cuban state
socialist system. Unbeknownst to American opinion-makers and the
general public, the Sandinista affinity for such systems was long-standing,
reaching back to the 1950s when one of the leaders, Carlos Fonseca, vis–
ited the Soviet Union and returned deeply impressed. Yet the Sandinistas
were perceived by their numerous sympathizers abroad as exactly the op–
posite: that is , as trying to create a humane socialist system uncontami–
nated by the Soviet example.
The Sandinista government also offers a case study in the exception–
ally rapid corruption of a revolutionary political elite. It was one of the
new generation of Communist regimes (along with those in Afghanistan,
