Abstrakt
The chapter reflects on the history of the radical left in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, dominated most of the time by the strong, disciplined but also largely 'bolshevized' Communist Party. Having been defeated in 1989, the party gradually arrived at a survival strategy of 'leftist retreat' thus maintaining its name, returning to its roots and focusing on its own membership/electoral base.
It represented an ageing, conservative, national-socialist left focusing on a strong nation state and social redistribution, siding internationally with Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea etc. just as before 1989, a modern radical left has developed outside the KSČM. Its antiestablish. appeal was taken over by the populist party of Andrej Babiš and the party was marginalised by 2021