A Balkan paradox

It seems like a historical paradox, but after the end of the communist system, the far right made a strong showing in the Balkans.

In Bulgaria, Volen Siderov, leader of the fiercely anti-NATO and anti-European Union Attack party, won 24 percent of the vote in the 2006 presidential elections. In Romania, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, leader of the Greater Romania Party, garnered 33 percent of the vote in the second round of elections in June 2000. Meanwhile, Vojislav Seselj, the founder and president of the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS), took 49.10 percent in the country's presidential runoff in September 1997.

The reasons behind the phenomenon are explored by Petros Papasarantopoulos in his book "Modernism and the Far Right in Post-Communism Balkans."

The writer, who is an expert in Balkan political history, claims that after communism collapsed in these three...