THE PARTY OF THE DEMOCRATIC LEFT – ITS ORIGIN, DEVELOPMENT, AND END
Miroslav Kučera
Studia Politica Slovaca, 2026, vol. 19, no. 1, p. 43-64
Language: Czech
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/SPS.2026-1.3
Abstract
The study traces the emergence, development, and transformation of the SDĽ into a modern left-wing party of the European type. The author’s goal is to highlight the multi-layered complexity of the circumstances that accompanied efforts to shift the SDĽ program towards social democracy. The author of the study seeks to bring the reader closer to individual SDĽ congresses, where polarisation occurred within the SDĽ and the formation of individual opinion streams emerged. The author’s core research subjects include the programmatic material of the SDĽ from its first congress in December 1991 to the completion of the divergence and the establishment of the platform of the Modern European Socialist Party, or Social Democratic Alternative, in March 2002. The 10th SDĽ congress in December 2004 and the merger with Smer are also an integral part of the work. Although this was presented as a unification of the left in the face of the radical reforms of the right-wing government, in reality, the fusion of the two parties marked the end of a chapter in the modern history of the left in Slovakia.
Keywords
democratic socialism, left, federation, Party of the Democratic Left, differentiation process in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
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