Latvijas Sociāldemokrātiskā Strādnieku partija

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Latvijas Sociāldemokrātiskā Strādnieku partija
Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party
Party leader Janis Dinevičs
founding 1918
Headquarters Riga
Alignment Social democracy
Colours) red
International connections Socialist International (observer)
European party Party of European Socialists (PES)
Website www.lsdsp.lv

The Latvijas Sociāldemokrātiskā Strādnieku partija ( LSDSP ; German  Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party ) is a political party in Latvia with a long and once successful history. She is currently not represented in the Latvian parliament, the Saeima .

LSDSP until 1906

The LSDSP is the oldest organized political party in Latvia and has its roots in the workers' associations of the New Current , which were founded in 1892, at a time when Latvia was still part of the Russian Empire . The early LSDSP, after it was formally founded on June 20, 1904 through the amalgamation of various socialist groups, initially had both nationalist and socialist positions and rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat . On June 1, 1904, the Social Democrats, together with the more radical Latvian Social Democratic Union , adopted a joint declaration calling for self-determination and the introduction of Latvian as the official and teaching language. In what is now Latvian territory, the LSDSP played a leading role during the revolution of 1905 , with the General Jewish Workers' Union organizing strikes in Rīga .

LSD 1906 to 1918

The party became an independent regional organization of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and was renamed Social Democracy of Latvia ( Latvijas sociāldemokrātija ; LSD ) on April 23, 1906 , and in 1907 had 16,000 members. However, the number of members fell sharply after the introduction of martial law and the mass arrests after the failed revolution of 1905 and fell to 2,000 members in 1911. With industrialization from around 1910, the party grew again, but the First World War brought another Decline to 500 members in 1916. In 1915 the Central Committee of the LSD came under the control of the Bolsheviks . In 1919 she became part of the Latvian Communist Party .

LSDSP 1918-1934

The Mensheviks, on the other hand, who had been excluded from the LSD party, re-founded a democratic LSDSP on June 17, 1918.

Once Latvia gained independence, the LSDSP was one of the two most influential parties alongside the Latvian Farmers' Association . The LSDSP held 57 of the 150 seats in the Constituent Assembly of 1920 (Satversmes Sapulce). It won the most seats in each of the four parliamentary elections of that time (1922: 31 out of 100, 1925: 33, 1928: 26 and 1931: 21). The leader of the LSDSP, Pauls Kalniņš , was speaker of the Latvian parliament from 1925 to 1934. The party was often in opposition, however, as many smaller right-wing parties formed government-building coalitions, usually led by the Latvian Peasants' Association.

After the coup d'état of May 15, 1934 by Kārlis Ulmanis , the LSDSP was banned like all other parties and remained so after the Soviet occupation in 1940. After many Latvians had left their homeland during the Second World War , the party was re-established as an "organization in exile". initially only in Sweden , later also in other western countries.

LSDSP today

After the restoration of Latvian independence in 1990, the LSDSP returned to Latvia. In the early 1990s she struggled with internal divisions. At times there were three social democratic parties in Latvia, two of them descendants of the LSDSP, the third the reformed party of the former Communist Party of Latvia . Eventually the parties merged under the umbrella and name of the LSDSP.

The united party enjoyed some success in the 1998 parliamentary elections, winning 14 out of 100 seats, and the 2001 local elections, in which one of its members, Gundars Bojārs, was elected Mayor of Riga (until 2005). In the parliamentary elections in 2002 the LSDSP was less successful, it only won four percent of the vote and failed to pass the five percent hurdle . In the parliamentary elections in 2006, too, the party failed again with 3.5 percent of the vote against the five percent hurdle.

The party chairman was Juris Bojārs for a long time until 2002 and 2005–2006 , although he was excluded from the Latvian electoral laws and his former KGB membership because of parliamentary elections and assuming political office. From 2006 Jānis Dinevičs was the party chairman, from 2010 Aivars Timofejevs . In the 2010 elections, the LSDSP ran as part of the Atbildība (“Responsibility”) electoral alliance . The only member of the party, however, was Atis Lejiņš , who had run against a party decision on the Vienotība candidate list. Lejiņš was expelled from the party in January 2011.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Diena: LSDSP excludes Lejiņš