The results of the Croatian parliamentary elections on July 5 were mostly grim news, with the rise of Miroslav Škoro’s hard-right Homeland Movement and an overall victory for the conservative Croatian Democratic Union. But amid setbacks for president Zoran Milanović’s Social Democrats, one ray of light was the breakthrough for the Green-Left coalition, standing in a general election for the first time.

A coalition of local campaigns and small left parties, the Green-Left coalition elected seven MPs to the 151-member Croatian parliament, including four for “We Can” and one for the democratic-socialist Workers’ Front. Three decades after socialist Yugoslavia collapsed in nationalist bloodshed, the Workers’ Front MP Katarina Peović is the first anti-capitalist member of the Croatian parliament since 1992.

Following her election, Peović hopes that democratic socialists in Croatia can build ties with other forces like Slovenia’s Levica in building a new coalition of the Left across the Balkans. She spoke to Jacobin’s George Souvlis about the need to reassert class politics, the growth of the Workers’ Front, and the sharpening of anti-communist attacks against the broad left.