Communists and Workers In Ex-Communist Europe

Abstract

The return to power of ex-Communist Parties in a number of East Central and East European countries in the mid-1990s came as a shock to many in the West largely because they had failed to notice the strength of the Communist electorate in the region during the so-called revolutions of 1989-90. In all the countries of East Central Europe, the formerly ruling Communist Parties emerged from the elections in 1989-90 as the dominant parties of the Left. In six of these first elections they gained the largest vote of any party. And eight years after tile beginning of the transition to capitalism, the ex-Communist parties remain the dominant parties of the Left in all the countries of the region except two.

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