In the recent Slovakian parliamentary elections, Direction – Social Democracy (SMER–SD) emerged as the biggest party on a platform of economic concessions to workers, and withdrawal of support for the Ukraine War, to the horror of the European establishment, who lambasted the party as ‘pro-Russian’. We have no illusions in this party, but the fact is that SMER and its leader Róbert Fico captured support from the poorest regions of the country by channelling an anti-establishment mood.