NICARAGUA, RELATIONS WITH

The Soviet Union had no diplomatic or economic relations with Nicaragua before the Somozas' fall in 1979. Contacts were through Communist Party organizations such as the Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN), founded in 1937 and illegal until 1979. While not opposing revolutionary violence in principle, the Communists believed that conditions in Nicaragua were not ripe for armed revolt. A member of the Party who had visited the USSR in 1957, Carlos Fonseca Amador, broke with the PSN on this issue. He called for insurrection and founded the Sandinista Front of National Liberation (FSLN) in 1961.

The Sandinistas led the revolutionary upheaval that overthrew the Somozas in 1979. They took full control of Nicaragua and ignored the communists (PSN). Unlike other Soviet satellites, the Sandinistas left about half of the economy in private hands, and agriculture was not collectivized. The FSLN leader, Daniel Ortega, lacked the authority in the Council of State that Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev had in the Soviet Politburo.

In spite of the fact that the Sandinistas' success meant defeat for the local Communists, Moscow quickly established good relations with the Sandinista government. Soviet economic and military aid approached billions of rubles, far less than to Cuba. While offering political, economic, and military support, Moscow sought to limit Nicaragua as an economic and strategic burden. Cuba actively supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and abroad.

Meanwhile, the Reagan administration was backing an armed paramilitary force, the contras, which sought to overthrow the Sandinistas. The United States also aided a right-wing regime in El Salvador besieged by revolutionary forces supposedly encouraged by the Sandinistas. Both U.S. efforts were inconclusive.

Early in 1990 President George Bush and General Secretary Gorbachev began cooperating in the region, as they were in Eastern Europe, to end these conflicts. Central American countries, the United Nations, and the two great powers negotiated a regional settlement. The United States stopped supporting the contras, the Sandinistas agreed to free elections, and the USSR mollified Cuba. Later Ortega was defeated in the elections for the Nicaraguan presidency, and Moscow was no longer an actor on the Central American scene.

See also: cuba, relations with; united states, relations with

bibliography

Blachman, Morris J.; Leogrande, William; and Sharpe, Kenneth. (1986). Confronting Revolution: Security through Diplomacy in Central America. New York: Pantheon.

Blasier, Cole. (1987). The Giant's Rival: The USSR and Latin America. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Cole Blasier