In this paper I examine the relatively under-investigated topic of how historical legacies shaped the emergence of the “Red-brown” political tendency in East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union e which is sometimes referred to as “National Bolshevism” or “National Communism” or “Strasserism.” More specifically I ask the question, how do historical legacies help explain why extreme right wing voters support the successors to the formerly dominant communist parties (or what I refer to as the “red-brown” vote)? I find that the most important legacy variable that affects the red brown phenomenon is the legacy of the previous communist regime.

The contrast between Slovakia’s primary Communist successor party—the Party of the Democratic Left—and its own successor— Smer —offers considerable insight into the interaction between party ideology, organization and electoral success in post-Communist Europe. The Party of the Democratic Left and Smer offered relatively similar programmatic positions, but Smer managed to replace—and far outpace—its predecessor by offering a more charismatic public face, a smaller and more tightly centralized organization and an ideological flexibility that permitted it to take advantage of a shifting electoral environment.

This article analyzes the reasons for the remarkable adaptability and electoral success of Communist successor parties in post-1990 Romania. The first part develops a three-dimensional classification scheme to identify Communist successor parties on the basis of their institutional, personnel and ideological continuity with the defunct Communist Party. The second section traces the political evolution of Communist successor parties, and argues that their remarkably strong and consistent electoral performance is primarily due to their ability to appeal to voters beyond the traditional base of East European ex-Communist parties on the left of the ideological spectrum. The final section uses survey data to suggest that the continued electoral appeal of Communist successor parties in Romania is due neither to Communist nostalgia or lack of democracy but to the complicated legacy of the Ceauşescu regime and the 1989 revolution.

Croatia’s complex and violent transition contributed to conditions under which ex-communists have exerted significant influence over multiple post-Communist parties. In the 1990s, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) led by President Franjo Tudjman employed war to impose a semi-authoritarian system that further weakened the electoral prospects of the most logical Communist successor party—the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The SDP-led coalition’s win in the 2000 elections ushered in conditions that enabled a deeper democratization in Croatia that brought it closer toward integration into the EU. HDZ’s loss in 2000 and EU leverage then helped compel HDZ to reform and to continue work toward meeting EU accession requirements.

In recent years much has been written on the communist successor parties. Although much of the existent work focuses on the electoral performance of these parties or has described, in great detail, the development of single parties, this paper evaluates the utility of theories of party identity change in application to the successor parties. As an initial exploration we investigate the successor parties’ programs before and after the initial competitive parliamentary elections in Hungary (in 1990), Poland (in 1991) and Russia (in 1993) to determine the extent to which poor electoral performance in initial competitive elections compelled the successor parties to alter their political identities.