BELGRADE — Simply walking down the streets of Belgrade can be a lesson in Serbian politics and history. On the walls of the city’s buildings, the spray-painted political slogans of the last 15 years share space with tributes to young women and to the city’s two main soccer teams — Red Star and Partizan.

The slogan recycled by Serbian nationalists in the late 1980s — " Samo sloga Srbina spasava " ( " Only unity saves Serbs " ) — is still fairly ubiquitous. Often, it is rendered in its symbolic form — a cross with the letter " C " ( " S " in Serbian) tucked into each corner. That call to unity became all too literal for those who lived in Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo. The result was a decade of bloody conflict between Serbia — led by communist-turned-nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic — and its neighbors in what was once Yugoslavia.

The walls have long borne witness to the fallout of that tumultuous decade. Anti-NATO graffiti from the 1999 bombing here once jostled for space with a phrase that predicted the end of Milosevic’s rule — " Gotov je " ( " He is finished " ). " Gotov je " and the black, clenched fist symbolizing the youth movement Otpor ( " Resistance " ) were painted on hundreds of Belgrade facades in 2000 — just before an opposition election victory and massive street protests finally ousted Milosevic.

On September 29, Serbia held its first presidential elections since Milosevic’s fall and extradition to face war-crimes charges at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). By the time of the election, an urban clean-up campaign had begun to erase Belgrade’s spray-painted history lesson. Particularly in the city center, those Otpor fists, as well as vulgar anti-American witticisms such as " Clinton, how does Chelsea suck? " , had disappeared from view, replaced by blank surfaces.

Just before the election, however, a number of the newly scrubbed walls were defaced once again. This time, it was by vivid purple-and-red graffiti supporting the presidential campaign of ultra-right-wing politician Vojislav Seselj and his Serbian Radical Party.

By all rights, Seselj and his party should also be part of the vanished history of post-Milosevic Serbia. His views rank among the ugliest and most backward-looking in the entire Balkans — combining fierce demagoguery, street violence, and virulent Serbian isolationism into a blend of potent political toxicity. The highlights of Seselj’s checkered career include organizing paramilitary troops to fight in Croatia, jail time (including a spell as a " dissident " in the 1980s), and two stints as a deputy prime minister to Milosevic. Depending on what day it is, the candidate says that his first act as president will be to arrest Serbian government officials — or to secure a Dutch visa to visit Serbs on trial at The Hague.

In short, Seselj is precisely what Serbia thought it had ditched when it sent the old regime packing in October 2000. But like the proverbial bad penny, Seselj keeps turning up. Back in May, his poll numbers were running at four percent. As the campaign swung into gear in August, he had risen to 12 points. By comparison, the two main presidential candidates — Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica and Serbian deputy prime minister Miroljub Labus — each had ratings in the high 20s to low 30s.

On a chilly and overcast Wednesday afternoon before the vote, Seselj held a campaign rally in front of the Federal Parliament building in downtown Belgrade. Despite the early 5 p.m. start, nearly 8000 of Seselj’s followers packed the street in front of the parliament and stopped traffic. They waved dark blue flags and pictures of indicted war criminals, including former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic and former Bosnian army general Ratko Mladic. Both Karadzic and Mladic remain on the lam from international justice, and are revered as heroes by Seselj and his followers.

The rally itself was a low-tech — verging on no-tech — affair. The stage was small and rickety, and a dodgy public-address system cranked out crackly Serbian folk songs about Seselj’s leadership and patriotism. But as political theater, the rally had potency and force. One could feel the sullen anger and resentment of the mostly male crowd sharpen and seethe as speaker after speaker attacked the government, organized crime, and the West. A letter from Milosevic — written from his prison cell in The Hague — endorsing Seselj’s candidacy was cheered warmly.

As darkness fell and the heavens began to open up, Seselj himself finally spoke. Gripping the microphone in his right hand, the candidate promised prison and mayhem for current government officials as his left hand karate-chopped through the air. As the crowd erupted into chants of his nickname, " Voy-oh, Voy-oh, " Seselj tucked his hand tightly behind his back and nodded with supreme satisfaction, soaking in the cheers of the drizzled-upon masses before him.

For a candidate whose politics are so firmly rooted in Serbia’s recently rejected past, Seselj attracted a lot of angry supporters to his rally. But just how many supporters he still has in Serbia really became clear on Sunday night, as journalists crowded into the Belgrade Media Center for the election results.

Under Serbian electoral law, a candidate must garner 50 percent of the vote to win. If that does not happen, the top two candidates go on to a second round. Sunday night’s result — leading to a runoff between Kostunica (who won 31.2 percent) and Labus (who won 27.2 percent), to be held October 13 — was not unexpected. Instead, most journalists talked about Seselj’s surprising and staggering receipt of 23 percent of the vote. He came within a few percentage points of besting Labus — and facing Kostunica in the runoff election for Serbia’s presidency.

A few days before the vote, James Lyon, director of the International Crisis Group’s Serbian Project, argued that the real news in the first round would be the strength that remained in Serbia’s hard-core nationalist parties. " It will tell us just how strong that nationalist element is, " Lyon said. " How many people retain that strong element of looking backward and being caught in the same old rhetoric. "

Lyon believed that the hard-liners among the 11 men who were nominated would collectively garner 30 percent. As it turns out, they easily surpassed that mark — with Seselj’s strong showing pushing the number closer to 35 percent.

Only two years after being turned out, Serbia’s hard-liners appear to be resurgent and influential once again.