In June 1945 after the war Stanisław Mikołajczyk, a PSL leader who had been Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, returned to communist-dominated Poland, where he joined the provisional government and rebuilt PSL. The party hoped to win the Yalta Conference-mandated elections and help establish a parliamentary system in Poland. However, the party soon found itself targeted with intimidation, arrests and violence by the communist secret police.[20]
The communists also formed a rival ersatz 'Peasants' party' controlled by them, in order to confuse voters. The January 1947 parliamentary election was heavily rigged, with the communist-controlled bloc claiming to have won 80% of the vote. The PSL were said to have won just 10% of the vote, but many neutral observers believe the PSL would have won the election had it been conducted fairly.[19]
Mikołajczyk was soon compelled to flee Poland for his life in October 1947. The communists then forced the remains of Mikołajczyk's PSL to unite with the pro-communist People's Party to form the United People's Party. The ZSL was a governing partner in the ruling coalition.[21]
Post-communist period (1990–2003)
Around the time of the fall of communism, several PSLs were recreated, including Porozumienie Ludowe, Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe-Odrodzenie, and Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Wilanów faction). In 1989, most merged into one party and took part in forming the first postwar noncommunist government in Poland with the Solidarity grouping; in 1990, the party changed its name to PSL.[22][23]
It remained on the left of Polish politics in the 1990s, entering into coalitions with the postcommunist Democratic Left Alliance.[24][25][26] In the 2001 parliamentary elections, PSL received 9% of votes and formed a coalition with the Democratic Left Alliance, an alliance which later broke down. Since then, PSL has moved towards more centrist and conservative policies.
In the 2010 local government elections, PSL obtained 16.3% of the votes in the elections to voivodship assemblies, in which it received 93 seats. In the Świętokrzyskie sejmik, the party received the most seats. In all parliamentary assemblies, PSL found itself in ruling coalitions with the PO, in four voivodeships receiving the positions of marshals. In the elections to poviat councils, the PSL committee obtained 15.88%, and in the elections to municipal councils 11% of the votes. The PSL won the largest number of village leaders (428) and mayors in the country, and in Zgierz, the party's candidate won the presidential election. In 2011, a PiS senator defected to PSL.[34]
In the parliamentary elections of 2011, PSL obtained 8.36% of votes on the list of candidates for the Sejm.[35] The party also won two seats in the Senate.[36] Eugeniusz Grzeszczak became the deputy speaker of the Sejm on behalf of the PSL.[37] PSL again became a partner of the PO in the government coalition. On December 7, 2011, as a result of the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, Arkadiusz Bratkowski, a PSL politician, assumed a mandate in the European Parliament.[38]
In July 2012, Stanisław Kalemba replaced Marek Sawicki as the minister of agriculture and rural development. Pawlak was defeated during the presidential election by Janusz Piechociński.[39] Two days later, Waldemar Pawlak announced his resignation as deputy prime minister and minister of economy. He was dismissed from both functions on November 27. On December 6, both these offices were taken over by Janusz Piechociński.
In January 2014, PSL decided to establish cooperation with SKL and Samoobrona, but SKL already in February announced that Jarosław Gowin joined Poland Together, and the PSL talks about a joint election campaign with Samoobrona did not end with an agreement. In March, MP Andrzej Dąbrowski left PSL.[40] The party's candidate in the 2015 presidential election was the marshal of the Świętokrzyskie Province, party vice president Adam Jarubas.[41] He placed 6th, obtaining 238,761 votes.[42] Before the second round, PSL was involved in the campaign of the then-incumbent President Bronisław Komorowski.[43]
At the 2015 parliamentary election, the PSL dropped to 5.13% of the vote, just barely over the 5% threshold. With 16 seats, it was the smallest of the five factions in the Sejm.[44]
Since then, PSL has lost even more support to PiS during the 2018 Polish local elections when they lost 87 seats and dropped to 12.07% unlike the 23.9% they got at the last local elections. After this, the party became a junior partner in coalition with the Civic Coalition and SLD.
After the parliamentary elections in 2023, Third Way block won 14.4% of the popular vote and 65 seats, it joined the government coalition with Civic Coalition and The Left. Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz was appointed as the deputy prime minister and as a Minister of National Defense, Czesław Siekierski was appointed as Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dariusz Klimczak was appointed as Minister of Infrastructure and Krzysztof Hetman as Minister of Development and Technology. Because of the electoral succes (65 MPs) Third Way block has also participated in 2024 local getting 12.07% of the votes in the elections to voivodship assemblies, in which it received 80 seats.
The Polish People's Party adhered to principles of social democracy and agrarian socialism during the 1990s, although it has moved towards Christian democracy in the 2000s.[51][52][53] It was positioned on the left-wing on the political spectrum during that period. As late as 2011, the party was still described as "a left-wing party, representing an agrarian socialist agenda, although it is also known for its social conservatism".[54] Up to 2008, the party also opposed liberalism, denouncing it as "primitive social Darwinism and warning against a liberal state where "people are subordinated to the market". After 2008, the Polish People's Party started drifting towards centrism, abandoning its criticism of economic liberalism and its agrarian socialist vision of Polish economy.[55]
The origin of the party's pivot was in late 2000s, as the party's anti-liberal slogan was overshadowed by the one of right-wing populist Law and Justice, while agrarian socialism became the staple of the far-left Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland, which would form an anti-liberal government together with Law and Justice and League of Polish Families in 2005. PSL started cooperating with the Civic Platform at this time - a party based on liberal and conservative ideas; this forced PSL to tone down its rhetoric as to avoid attacking the anticipated future coalition partner.[56] Political analysis of the party's rhetoric in 2006 found that the party would increasingly embrace liberalism in place of its hitherto economically left-wing program, which placed the party closer to the Civic Platform and other centre-right parties. This was in stark contrast to a fellow agrarian party Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland, which espoused conservatively socialist views.[57]
In the 2010s, the party started to lose support between rural voters (especially in southeast of Poland, e.g. Subcarpathian Voivodeship). In 2019 election PSL gained surprisingly significant support in cities and won mandates (e. g. in Warsaw and Wrocław).[73]
^Drabik, Piotr (1 June 2023). "PiS nie jest największą partią w Polsce. "Liczy się tylko kartel czterech"". Radio ZET (in Polish). W statystykach najsilniejsze jest Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, które w swojej historii odwołuje się do XIX-wiecznego ruchu agrarnego. Obecnie partia liczy 73 222 członków. [In terms of statistics, the strongest is the Polish People's Party, which refers to the 19th century agrarian movement in its history. The party currently has 73 222 members."]
^Gmitruk, Janusz; Indraszczyk, Arkadiusz; Stępka, Stanisław (2010). Partie chłopskie i ludowe w Polsce oraz w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej (1989-2009) (in Polish). Warsaw: Muzeum Historii Polskiego Ruchu Ludowego. ISBN978-83-7583-191-7. Po trzecie Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe było partią sytuującą się na lewicy sceny politycznej. Wyważone elementy programu, nawiązujące do ideologii socjalizmu agrarnego, (...) [Thirdly, the Polish People's Party was a party positioned on the left of the political scene. The balanced elements of its programme, referring to the ideology of agrarian socialism, (...)]
^ abGerber, Alexandra (2011). Being Polish/Becoming European: Gender and The Limits of Diffusion in Polish Accession to the European Union(PDF). Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan. p. 167. PSL is technically a left-wing party, representing an agrarian socialist agenda, although it is also known for its social conservatism and is the oldest political party in Poland, dating back to before the communist regime. Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, PSL was often a member of the ruling coalition with SLD. However, the coalition between SLD and PSL broke down during the 4th Parliamentary Session (2004), and since that time, the party has shifted to the center.
^Krzysztof Kowalczyk; Jerzy Sielski (2006). Partie i ugrupowania parlamentarne III Rzeczypospolitej (in Polish). Dom Wydawniczy DUET. p. 154. ISBN978-83-89706-84-3. Przyjmując kryterium ideologiczno-programowe, J. Sielski zalicza Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe do grupy partii centrowych o orientacji ludowej. Biorąc pod uwagę ideologię, to można je zaliczyć do partii agrarnych. Na scenie w ostatnich latach ludowcy byli zdecydowanie na lewej stronie. Niekiedy zalicza się PSL do partii postpeerelowskich, gdyż przejęło ono znaczną część członków i majątek po ZSL. [Adopting the ideological and programmatic criterion, J. Sielski classifies the Polish People's Party as a centrist party with a folk orientation. Taking ideology into account, it can be classified as an agrarian party. But on the political scene in last years, the People's Party had been definitely on the left. The PSL is sometimes categorised as a post-communist party, as it took over a significant proportion of members and assets from the ZSL.]
^Filipczak-Białkowska, Anita (2018). Mechanizmy manifestowania orientacji ideologicznej w dyskursie politycznym (in Polish). Łódź: Primum Verbum. pp. 168–196. doi:10.18778/8142-136-2.01. ISBN978-83-65237-58-3.
^Tomczak, Tomasz (2006). Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe – trwały element polskiego parlamentu?. DUET. pp. 129–155.