A neat illustration of the different conceptions of political “left” and “right” between Western and Eastern Europe. In the West, economic left is usually coupled with social progressivism, and economic right with conservatism. In the East, specifically in the countries of the former Communist Bloc, the couplings are flipped: economic left parties are socially conservative, and economic right - progressive.
(source on Twitter)
It makes sense when you think of the two camps as “wanting things to stay familiar” versus “trying out new stuff”, and the difference between East and West being about what sort of things the respective societies find familiar. When the majority of the political class and the voting population still consists of people who grew up under Soviet rule, the conception of a familiar status quo is anchored around state-managed economy and a homogeneous “normal” society, even if that is no longer the status quo that exists over three decades after the collapse of communism.
Sometimes it does get weird though. For example, Lithuanian “Laisvės partija” (Freedom Party) labels itself center-right and is very in favor of free market and against new taxes. It is also the only party that is unambiguously in favor of same-sex marriage and legalization of cannabis. And for that its opponents from the socially conservative (and thus generally economically left) end of the spectrum call it “leftist” as a pejorative borrowed from the Western-style political right.
