“The darker the night, the brighter the stars.” For generations, socialists have used this quotation from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment to poetically frame small successes in otherwise dark times. These words took on newfound relevance for the European left on the last Sunday of September 2021, as Die Linke’s harrowing defeat in the German elections was tempered by a historic victory for the Communist Party (KPÖ) in Austria’s second city, Graz.

This success, with 29 percent of the vote going to the KPÖ, was surprising for many reasons in a city previously run by conservatives. But it didn’t come from nowhere. The local KPÖ has been building an important base in Graz over more than three decades, engaging in struggles over everyday issues like tenants’ rights as well as projecting a broad vision of social change. Now, with the KPÖ’s Elke Kahr elected mayor in a coalition with Greens and Social Democrats, the party can continue its struggle from city hall.

Jacobin’s Loren Balhorn spoke to Kahr about how her party won the trust of tens of thousands of voters — and what a Communist mayor can achieve under capitalism.