The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) took power in Nicaragua on 19 July 1979 after the flight of the dictator Anastasio Somoza. To achieve this, it had to take advantage of the political opportunities that opened up, both internally with the disaffection of the oligarchy, and externally where, after a successful solidarity campaign, it managed to get European democracies and the USA to support change in Nicaragua. The FSLN ideological and strategic evolution from its founding in the early 1960s to its split into Tendencias in the early 1970s was not a negative factor; on the contrary, this meant that it was able to bring its ideas closer together and recruit support from different sectors of Nicaraguan society—peasants, urban workers, students and businessmen—as well as gaining support from the different ideologies into which the bipolar world of the Cold War was divided.