ZSMS iz družbenopolitične organizacije v politično stranko
Transformation of the ZSMS from a Socio-Political Organisation Into a Political Party

Summary/Abstract: The contribution addresses a short yet important period of "intermediacy" in the organisational status of the Socialist Youth League of Slovenia (hereinafter the ZSMS) in 1989 and in the beginning of 1990. The author takes into consideration the representations in the media (Mladina and Delo) with regard to the organisational issues of this youth organisation, which assumed an "active stance" in the months following the apprehension of "the Four" (in the summer of 1988) and thus became openly oppositional, even though it remained within the functional structure of the socio-political organisations. A short organisational history of the ZSMS in 1989 and 1990 shows that this organisation did not follow a straight line of transformation into a political party. At its 13th Congress in Portorož, the ZSMS became an independent political organisation and announced it would participate in the multiparty elections. Nonetheless, the leadership still avoided calling this organisation a party. It is a sort of a paradox that the ZSMS could only become a party by at least partially "not wanting to be a party" or by "wanting to be more than a party". For more than a decade, the successor of the ZSMS – the Liberal Democrats of Slovenia (LDS, after 1994 the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia) – was the most important political party in Slovenia. The author concludes the article with the realization that the "merging of various interests" was the main characteristic of the ZSMS/LDS, also in the period of party pluralism.

• Details
• Contents