The partly open parliamentary elections in 1989 appeared to be a ruinous defeat for Polish United Worker’s Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza/PZPR), capturing no more than the number of seats, previously assured during the Round Table talks with the anti-communist opposition. But the former PZPR surprisingly quickly underwent organizational and programmatic transformation into today’s Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej/SLD), being one of just two solid political factors within the instable Polish party system and seizing governmental power twice in 1993 and in 2001.
However, the equally rapid decline of the Alliance after the turn of the millennium seems to prove scholars right, who accuse the altered (now) social democratic party of being a non-ideology-based technocracy of power (Jörs 2006) and consider its former prosperity to be the mere effect of a generally very volatile electorate in Central and Eastern Europe (Lang 2009).
Currently we notice intense effort of the party leadership to boost party identification by commemorating merits and statesmen that (might) have a positive connotation for SLD’s members and followers, thus trying to counter its image as a “syndicate of power” (Materska-Sosnowska 2006) and to regain political importance.
Presenting intermediate data, based on qualitative research interviews with (former) party members, the paper tests the critical evaluation that the Alliance lacks evident identity by searching items of collective self-conception, which have held the party together so far beyond individual career aspirations (office seeking) and which might be a possible background for future (re-)construction processes within polish social democracy. In doing so it facilitates insights into the barely known inner life of Polish parties. Eventually it discusses general questions about the suitability and challenges of interviews as a method of party research.
