Croatian Peasant Party
| Hrvatska seljačka stranka | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Party leader | Krešo Beljak (since 2016) |
| founding | December 22, 1904, again in 1989 |
| Headquarters | Ulica kralja Zvonimira 17 10000 Zagreb |
| Alignment |
Green politics , pro-European, liberalism , republicanism |
| Colours) | green |
| Parliament seats |
5/151 |
| European party | No |
| Website | https://hss.hr/ |
The Croatian Peasant Party (Croatian Hrvatska seljačka stranka , HSS) was founded in December 1904 by Stjepan Radić and Antun Radić in Zagreb under the name Croatian People's and Peasant Party (HPSS, Hrvatska Pučka Seljačka Stranka ). In 1920 it was renamed the Croatian Republican Peasant Party (HRSS) and in 1925 the Croatian Peasant Party .
The peasant party in the first half of the 20th century
Before the First World War , the HPSS advocated the national unity of Croats, Slovenes and Serbs. She called for universal suffrage as well as social and cultural reforms in favor of the peasants. The HPSS refused to cooperate with Hungary against Austria , as demanded by the Fiuman resolution of 1905. Rather, she fought for the unification of the administratively divided Croatian regions of Slavonia , Dalmatia and Central Croatia under the Habsburg monarchy and for the abolition of the Hungarian-Croatian compromise .
In the elections for the constituent assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , in which universal suffrage was for men for the first time in Croatia , the Croatian Peasant Party under Stjepan Radić won in Croatia-Slavonia , which had only played a minor role before the war, the absolute majority of the vote. In Dalmatia, on the other hand, bourgeois groups from the environment of the former Yugoslav Committee initially retained the majority.
The Croatian Peasant Party rejected the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in the form in which it had taken place. Citing the right of peoples to self-determination proclaimed by American President Woodrow Wilson , she demanded the recognition of a separate right of self-determination for Croatia and the other South Slav peoples. In addition, she rejected the monarchical form of government and demanded the establishment of a republic for Croatia .
Since a veto right of the individual peoples was not recognized in the procedure of the constituent assembly and the monarchical form of government could not be questioned, the members of the Croatian Peasant Party boycotted it and instead worked out a constitution for a peasant republic of Croatia, which is part of a future confederation of South Slav peasant republics should be. However, due to the real balance of power, this remained mere paper.
Due to the boycott of the Croatian Peasant Party and the absence of MPs from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia , which had been banned as “subversive” shortly after the elections, the Constituent Assembly, which had shrunk in number, passed a constitution in 1921 with a narrow majority that established a centralized state organization and the dissolution of the historical provinces, which de facto secured the rule of the Serbs as the numerically largest people.
After Radić's visit to Moscow on July 1, 1924, the HSS was part of the Peasant International until March 27, 1924 . Heinz Gollwitzer does not consider sudden communist tendencies to be the cause, but rather sees them as an act of desperation due to the lack of (especially international) alternatives, after US President Woodrow Wilson did not give the hoped-for support (see also 14-point program ).
The Croatian Peasants' Party subsequently grew and became the strongest party in Dalmatia and among the Croatians in Bosnia-Herzegovina . After she was unsuccessful with a pure boycott policy, she gave up the boycott of the central parliament and the rejection of the monarchy and at times also took part in the central government. Until 1925 she supported a government made up of Serbian democrats, the “Slovenian People's Party” and the “Yugoslav Muslim Organization”. Between 1925 and 1927 she formed a coalition government with the Serbian "radicals".
On June 20, 1928, a Montenegrin member of parliament shot and killed four members of the Croatian Peasant Party, including its leader Stjepan Radić.
After the occupation and defeat of Yugoslavia by German and Italian troops in the spring of 1941, the Ustaše transferred power to the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) , which had been declared "independent" , after the Croatian Peasant Party under Vladko Maček had refused to collaborate.
After 1945 the party became part of the so-called Popular Front (from 1953 Socialist League of Working People of Yugoslavia ) and no longer played an independent role.
The peasant party in today's Republic of Croatia
The HSS has a steady constituency among the rural and suburban populations of northern and eastern Croatia. It is moderately conservative; in 2000 she participated in a center-left coalition.
In March 2007, the party announced that it would run in the autumn 2007 parliamentary elections in a coalition with the Croatian Social-Liberal Party (HSLS). After the elections, the Croatian Peasant Party and the HSLS took part in a government coalition with the HDZ . After the parliamentary elections in 2011, the HSS went into the opposition with only one parliamentary seat. It currently has five seats in parliament and one member of the European Parliament. In 2019 she announced her resignation from the Group of the European People's Party because of its support for Viktor Orbán , who was buying up media in Croatia through business people that were now “spreading hatred”. In June 2019 the party decided on a new party program called Nova Republika , in which it defined itself as “modern, progressive, republican and green politics”.
See also
literature
- Michael Portmann : The Croatian Peasant Party and Catholicism in Croatia 1918 to 1928 . GRIN-Verlag 2006
- Arno Weckbecker, Frank Hoffmeister: The development of the political parties in the former Yugoslavia. Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-56336-X , p. 187.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b HSS donio novi program: "Kažu da se okreću borbi protiv krupnog kapitala, izrabljivača građana i nepotrebne birokracije." In: jutarnji.hr of June 10, 2019.
- ↑ Robert Bajruši: Radikalni Politički zaokret Beljkovog HSS-a stranka ima novu Strategiju. Zbogom demokršćanstvu, mi smo progresivni liberali. In: jutarnji.hr of July 13, 2017.
- ^ Heinz Gollwitzer: European peasant parties in the 20th century . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2016, p. 702 ( full text in Google Book Search).
- ↑ Holm Sundhaussen : Experiment Yugoslavia: from the founding of the state to the collapse of the state. BI-Taschenbuchverlag, Zurich 1993. ISBN 3-411-10241-1 , pp. 51f.
- ↑ Croatian party leaves EPP - because of Orbán. In: Spiegel Online . Spiegel Online, February 25, 2019, accessed March 2, 2019 .
