Whatever happened to Red Belt rural communism in Western Europe? A comparative perspective on the Finnish case

Abstract

In the three West European polities in which Cold War communism gained its greatest traction–Italy, France and Finland–the distinctive ecology of rural communism gave rise to references to ‘red zones’ or ‘red belts’ in the countryside. These were marked by the numerical strength, electoral stability and geographical continuity of communist support. Against this backdrop, this article poses two period-based research questions. First, what was the extent of party change in the historic strongholds of rural communism in Western Europe between the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991? Second, to what extent has a tradition of radical leftist voting persisted in the rural red belts in the post-communist era? The paper offers a comparative perspective on the trajectory of rural communism in the Finnish case, where recent evidence points to a significant shift of radical left voters to the radical right in traditional red-belt territory.