This is an independent analysis of the first five years of the Sandinista Revolution by a group of Latin American and US scholars and journalists who have lived in Nicaragua almost continuously since 1979. They show the immense problems -- organizational, economic, political -- faced by a country distorted by decades of the Somoza dictatorship, problems intensified by the USA's continuous pressure since 1979 and the CIA's covert war of subversion. And they pose the question: what is the long-term direction and significance of the Nicaraguan Revolution?