Ah yes, the overtly corrupt populist right, the great partner of a Peoples Republic.
Oh yeah, I forgot calling oneself a socialist lifts any questions from the western leftists. You can be a corrupt nationalist government, have mafia kill jurnos, all is good.
Can’t be bothered to look for a similar research for SMER, but when the party members of Polish SLD (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej - same type of post-communist party) were studied they tended to be economically more liberal and socially more conservative then the local neo-cons, and that’s quite an achievement, as these are basically air-dropped chicago-school of economy US made products.
Left wing ideologies have been destroyed in CEE by the soviet fallout. What’s left* are parties cashing in on the nostalgia (/conservatism) and soft authoritarianism with a hint of social policies. By this account Polish PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) party is also nearly leftist - they had some populist social programs. None of these actually affect the situation of the neglected parts of society in the long term, but the cash giveaways secure the vote, and apparently support from some…
*Of course outside of mainstream there’s tiny honest left, socialist or even communist groups, but that’s nothing to do with what passes as the mainstream “left”, most of which is to the right of western centrists.
