Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants


The Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants 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. 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.
Other important figures were Josef Žďářský, Antonín Švehla, František Udržal, Jan Malypetr and Milan Hodža as well as Rudolf Beran.
The party was not allowed to reorganize after World War II.

Electoral results