The Czechoslovaks voted into power a Communist-led government in 1946, giving Czechoslovakia the distinction of being the only nation within the Eastern Bloc to bring to power a Communist head of government through free and fair elections.

Communism, the Soviet Union, and Stalin himself all found favor in Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Second World War. Stalin, after all, was not culpable at the Munich Conference of 1938, where the leaders of France, Britain, and Germany--but not Czechoslovakia, which was given no representation at the conference--decided to transfer a large portion of ethnically German Czechoslovakia to Hitler's Germany in order to avoid war. The Czechoslovaks understood this to be a betrayal, as their president (and former foreign minister) Edward Benes had negotiated a military alliance with France aimed at preserving democracy in the region by containing German aggression. Then, in 1945, the Red Army of the Soviet Union liberated most of Czechoslovakia, including Prague (the Czechoslovak capital). The Soviet Union became very popular in Czechoslovakia after liberation, especially among the politically-minded youth who wished to do away with the system that had allowed Czechoslovakia to be betrayed by the Western powers. In the first elections after the war, the Communists earned 38% of the vote, far more than any single party have ever earned in the elections for Prague's parliament. Of course, the people got more than they bargained for after Prime Minister Clement Gottwald used his authority as well as that of other Communists in his cabinet to suppress non-Communists in the government and government agencies, including the police force. When non-Communists in the cabinet resigned in protest, Gottwald counter by declaring complete Communist Party control over Czechoslovakia, to which an aging Benes (still president) consented. The Czechoslovak Communist "coup" of 1948 was enacted by a Communist prime minister who had been elected fairly.

There are in fact several examples of Communist parties emerging from elections as the strongest force and even being voted into power.

The first government under the participation of a communist party voted into power by free elections took place in 1945 in San Marino. From 1923 onward, under the heavy influence of Fascist Italy, San Marino was rules by the Sammarinese Fascist Party. I have written previously about the history of San Marino in WWII here. After the collapse of fascist rule in San Marino, the first elections held in 1943 brought to power a coalition of all Sammarinese parties, including the Christian Democrats, a moderate left wing catholic party under the heavy influence of its Italian counterpart. But in 1945, a combined left list of the Socialist Party of San Marino and the Sammarinese Communist Party won the elcetions and continued to hold power (even though they ran separate platforms in 1951) until the Great Constitutional Crisis in 1957. The crisis in 1947 went back to five socialist MPs of the total sixty (35 of which were held by the coalition of Socialists and Communists as per the proportional representation in the Grand Council) wanted to break the coalition because of the continued support of the SCP for the Soviet Union after the invasion of Hungary in 1956. These five socialist MPs left and formed a new party resulting in an even 30-30 split in the Grand Council. This eventually lead to a constitutional crisis that erupted in small scale violence and a provisional government with the support of Italy formed in the town of Rovereta, which with the help of 30 Italian carabineri established power in San Marino again. The crisis is to this day known as the "Fatti di Rovereta".

San Marino under socialist-communist rule is interesting. Some of the provisions introduced by this government were in effect for a rather long time, even beyond the fall of the Eastern Bloc and its effects can still be gleaned from San Marino's laws on business and taxation. One of the most interesting cases is that one huge source of income for San Marino during that time was a casino run by a shadowy Italian business man as is described in this article in Life Magazine from 1949.

San Marino, in its political culture is very similar to Italy. Italy too had a strong communist party that during the period between 1945 and 1991 regularly obtained 20-30% of the vote, with its high point in the election of 1976 with 36% of the vote. Throughout this whole period, a socialist-communist government in Italy could have been formed but this never happened because with the influence of the US and the Vatican, the former funding the leading Christian Democratic Party to a great degree, there was a sort of compromise that whatever would happen, the communist should not be in the government or otherwise funding etc. would cease. This greatly contributed to the political instability of Italy in this period and its effects are felt until today because it lead them to have a very low threshold for a party to gain seats in Parliament.

The only time a communist government was close in Italy was when one of the longest serving Italian prime ministers, Aldo Moro of the Christian Democratic Party, tried to forge what has been called the "Historic Compromise" in 1970, which was an accord between the CDP and the communist party to share power in Italy. The communist party had recently made the turn away from the USSR towards Eurocommunism and the time seemed ripe to end the political stand-off of previous years. Unfortunately, this was development was ended by the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by the left-wing terrorist organization Brigate Rosse in 1976, who opposed the state in general and the Communist Party to boot. While some historians like the communist Sergio Flamigni have asserted that it wasn't the Brigate Rosse but rather the Nato financed secret army in Italy known as Gladio, this view has faced immense criticism in recent years following more and more revelations about Gladio.

France faced a similar situation with strong support of the Communists at the ballot boy for some time after 1945 but I am afraid that falls too far outside of my expertise.

Another government under communists participation that was elected was the Frente Popular Government in Spain in 1936, famously known for fighting the Spanish Civil War against the right-wing forces that rose up against it. This is a somewhat contentious case however since the communists were far from the strongest party.

Edited to add: The elections in Czechoslovakia 1946 have been mentioned as another example. This is another example of communists emerging victorious from the ballot box. Despite the fact that several parties suspected of collaboration with the Nazi regime were not allowed to stand for election in 1946, the narrative of certain right wing forces in Czechia and Slovakia today that the elections were unfree, does not hold up. Next to the Social Democratic and Communist parties, there also were the Christian Democratic Czech People's party and the decidedly non-communist Democratic Party who ran in this election and gained 15 and 14 % of the vote respectively.

Edited to add, the second: Upon looking into another book I have on Austromarxist Otto Bauer and the Eurocommunists, it appears that another communist party, which participated in coalition governments in the post war era was the Communist Party of Finland, though they never ran for an election under their own name. Rather they participated in the Finnish People's Democratic League together with other radical leftists and regularly pulled between 14 and 27% between 1944 and 1979.

In conclusion, the assertion that voting immunizes against communism is one that does not hold up in light of the historical evidence. During the interwar period there have been several communist parties with strong results at the ballot box, including France and Germany and even in the after-war period, we see democratically elected communist governments in at least one European states and several that have come very close to power.

Sources:

• Barry Bartmann: Meeting the needs of microstate security. In: The Round Table. 91, 2002, S. 361–374.

• Der Spiegel: Staatsstreich in San Marino.

• Maria Antonietta Bonelli a cura di Valentina Rossi, 1957 Rovereta, Minerva Edizioni in collaborazione con la Fondazione San Marino, Bologna, 2011.

• Tobias Hof: The Moro Affair – Left-Wing Terrorism and Conspiracy in Italy in the Late 1970s. Historical Social Research, vol. 38 (2013), no. 1, pp. 129–141.

• Tobias Hof: Der Fall Aldo Moro und der Terrorismus in Italien. In Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, Hrsg. Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom. Hrsg., Bd. 87 2007.

• Nikolas Dörr: Wandel des Kommunismus in Westeuropa: eine Analyse der innerparteilichen Entwicklungen in den Kommunistischen Parteien Frankreichs, Finnlands und Italiens im Zuge des Eurokommunismus. Berlin, 2006.

• Carl Boggs and David Plotke, The Politics of Eurocommunism: Socialism in Transition, 1999.