Historical legacies and the size of the red-brown vote in post-communist politics

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 – 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.