Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Czech. (March 2024) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Czech Wikipedia article at [[:cs:Republikánská strana zemědělského a malorolnického lidu]]; see its history for attribution.
  • You should also add the template {{Translated|cs|Republikánská strana zemědělského a malorolnického lidu}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.
Political party in Czechoslovakia
Cloverleaf – symbol of the party

The Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants (Czech: Republikánská strana zemědělského a malorolnického lidu, Slovak: Republikánska strana zemedelského a maloroľníckeho ľudu, RSZML) was a centre-right agrarian party of Czechoslovakia, seen as representing big business and agriculture. In the period up to 1935 it was the biggest and most influential political party in the country. Led by Antonín Švehla and Milan Hodža, the party influenced Czechoslovak politics between World War I and World War II. It participated in the Pětka coalition governments, and it was a member of the International Agrarian Bureau.

History

The party was established in 1922 as a merger of the Czech Agrarian Party and the Slovak National Republican and Peasant Party.[1] In the 1925 elections it won 45 of the 300 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, becoming the largest party in Parliament. In the same year it introduced an agrarian tariff which was seen as protecting the producers interest, motivated by the country's agrarian crisis. It is argued that it helped the Hungarians more than it did the Slovaks. Prime Minister Udržal was a member of the party, but he lost its support, which meant that he failed to hold his coalition together. Internal struggles within the party grew and the coalition government failed in July 1932. It was consistently the strongest party, forming and dominating coalitions. It moved beyond its original agrarian base to reach middle-class voters.[2]

Other important figures were Josef Žďářský (Party President 1905-1909), Antonín Švehla (Party President 1909-1933 and Prime Minister 1922-1926, 1926-1929), František Udržal (Prime Minister 1929-1932), Jan Malypetr (Prime Minister 1932-1935) and Milan Hodža (Prime Minister 1935-1938) as well as Rudolf Beran (Party President 1935-1938 and Prime Minister 1938-1939).

The party was not allowed to reorganize after World War II.[1]

Electoral results

Chamber of Deputies
Election year # of
overall votes
% of
overall vote
# of
overall seats won
+/– Leader Position
1920 603,618 (#4) 9.74
28 / 281
Karel Prášek
Government
1925 970,498 (#1) 13.66
45 / 300
Increase 17
Government
1929 1,105,498 (#1) 15.0
46 / 300
Increase 1
Government
1935 1,176,628 (#2) 14.3
45 / 300
Decrease 1
Government
Senate
Election year # of
overall votes
% of
overall vote
# of
overall seats won
+/– Leader
1920 530,388 (#4) 10.15
14 / 142
Karel Prášek
1925 841,647 (#1) 13.8
23 / 150
Increase 9
1929 978,291 (#1) 15.2
24 / 150
Increase 1
1935 1,042,924 (#2) 14.3
23 / 150
Decrease 1

References

  1. ^ a b Vincent E McHale (1983) Political parties of Europe, Greenwood Press, p151 ISBN 0-313-23804-9
  2. ^ Sharon Werning Rivera, "Historical cleavages or transition mode? Influences on the emerging party systems in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia." Party Politics (1996) 2#2 : 177-208.
  • "Between Interest Representation and Governingthrough Parliamentary Democracy" (2000). Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 11 Sept. 2007
  • Janos, Andrew C. East Central Europe. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2000.
  • Miroslav Mareš, Pavel Pšeja. Agrarian and Peasant Parties in the Czech Republic: History, Presence and Central European Context
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
International
  • VIAF
National
  • United States
  • Czech Republic
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4