Left turn in postcommunist politics: Bringing class back in?

he first surprise, of course, came in 1989 when the state socialist regimes, widely perceived as relatively stable, suddenly collapsed. Even social analysts who anticipated an eventual shift from one-party rule to a multiparty system typically expected this change to happen more gradually, over a longer period of time. Also, and more important for the purposes of this paper, it was often assumed that communist regimes, at least initially, be replaced by a social democratic regimes, which would be more sensitive to the problems of social inequalities and justice than their communist predecessors had been. Instead, political change came fast and the Communist parties (CPs) or their successor organizations were not defeated in the elections by social democrats, but by parties that advocated conservative causes and patri-otic and religious values.