Reds, Pinks, Blacks and Blues. Radicals Politics in Post-Communist East Central Europe
Reds, Pinks, Blacks and Blues. Radicals Politics in Post-Communist East Central Europe

Summary/Abstract: The scholarly literature on post-communist political formations suspected of antagonism to the "democratic game" has suffered from three main deficiencies. First, it has either dealt with the "extreme left" or with the "extreme right" of the politi­cal spectrum but never (to the best knowledge of this author) with both of them joint­ly. Although the applicability of the Left-Right continuum to the post-communist states has been questioned by most scholars, the continuum was implicitly re-introduced via the back door by dwelling on either "successor parties"1 or on parties that were alternatively labeled "right wing" and "right"1 2, "extreme right"3 or "radical right"4. One pair of authors, Merkl and Weinberg, once employed "radical right"5 and once "right-wing extremism"6 to address one and the same phenomenon. The second defi­ciency, as it should transpire from the above, is one that is both conceptual and tax­onomic. Finally, the third deficiency, stems from the failure of every single one of the above-mentioned authors to provide that "systemic" perspective that Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrot7 were asking contributors to their three edited volumes to come up with. In other words, what has been most acutely lacking is an analysis of the impact and influence (both actual and potential) of these political formations on the emerging "transitional" political system.

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