10.1177/0888325403258286 ARTICLE Echoes of Latifundism? East European Politics and Societies Echoes of Latifundism? Electoral Constituencies of Successor Parties in Post-Communist Countries. Jacek Lubecki* This article examines patterns of elector support for successor parties in Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and Russia. After consideration of com- peting hypotheses purporting to explain variance in successor vote, the author proposes a new hypothesis—that regions dominated by latifundism in pre-communist times, and where masses of agricultural proletarians and impoverished peasants experienced the communist period as an era of unprecedented social advancement, show an above-average level of elec- tor support for successor parties. This hypothesis is tested on a regional level in the four country-cases and found to be valid and a more powerful determinate of regional variance in patterns of successor vote than socio- economic status of regions in the post-communist era. Keywords: successor parties; latifundism; regional political culture; post- communist Europe; Hungary; Russia; Poland; East Germany Successor parties 1 derived from the former ruling communist par- ties in Eastern and Central Europe began their string of surprising electoral successes with Lithuania in 1992, followed by Poland in 1993 and Hungary in 1994. In these particular countries, the suc- cessor left was able to capture parliamentary majorities and 10 East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 18, No. 1, pages 10–44. ISSN 0888-3254 © 2004 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1177/0888325403258286 1. Two criteria determine the term successor parties for the purposes of this paper: (1) parties that are institutional successors of the former ruling communist parties of Eastern Europe and (2) those among them that achieved genuine electoral successes in reasonably free elec- tions. More specifically, the parties or electoral blocks under consideration are, in Hungary, the MSZP (Hungarian Socialist Party) and the MSZMP (Hungarian Socialist Workers Party); in Poland, the electoral block SLD (Union of Democratic Left); in Germany, the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism); and in Russia, the KPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federa- tion) and its agrarian ally AP (Agrarian Party). * I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer from EEPS, as well as John Ishiyama, Valerie Assetto, Michael Bernhard, and Spencer Wellhofer for their useful comments on different drafts of this article. Part of the research for this article was made possible by the Russian and East European Center at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its Title III grant that allowed me to participate in the 2001 Summer Research Laboratory.