Czechoslovak National Social Party
체코슬로바키아 국민사회당
A Czech party founded in 1897 by workers who rejected the Social Democrats’ disavowal of Czech state rights. It combined reformist socialism with national radicalism and was a major party of the First Republic, sitting in most of its governments. Edvard Beneš was its vice-chairman, and it became the second-largest party after the Communists in the 1946 election, but its free activity ended with the communist takeover of February 1948.
In depth
According to the Czech source, when Czech Social Democratic deputies made a declaration in the Imperial Council on 30 March 1897 distancing themselves from Czech state rights, a group of “national workers” who rejected it met at the Old Town Hall in Prague on 4 April, and the meeting became the party’s founding assembly. Known at first as the Party of National Workers, it took the name Czech National Social Party the following year. It combined reformist socialism, national radicalism and anti-Austrian antimilitarism, for which it was persecuted during the First World War. In spring 1918 it merged with Masaryk’s Progressive Party and others into the Czech Socialist Party.
After Czechoslovak independence the party acted as the Czechoslovak Socialist Party, and its 1926 congress renamed it the Czechoslovak National Social Party. The same congress settled the dispute between chairman Václav Klofáč and the nationalist Jiří Stříbrný in Klofáč’s favour and expelled Stříbrný’s followers. Edvard Beneš joined in 1923, was vice-chairman in 1926–1935, and in 1935 was elected president on Masaryk’s recommendation. As one of the “Castle” parties and a member of the five-party Pětka, the party sustained the First Republic and sat in government in 1918–1926 and 1929–1938.
After the 1938 Munich Agreement the party broke up: most of its leadership joined the Party of National Unity and a group joined the National Labour Party. During the Second World War its members took part in the resistance at home and in exile; the Nazis, who called it the “Beneš party”, executed or tortured to death about 2,400 of its members, and the later chairman Petr Zenkl and Milada Horáková were among those held in concentration camps.
The party was restored in May 1945 with Zenkl as chairman. It had about 450,000 members at the end of 1945 and about 594,000 in autumn 1946, and in the 1946 election it won 23.66% to become the second party after the Communists. The communist takeover of February 1948 cut short its free development, and supporters of the Communists were installed in its leadership. Thereafter it remained a satellite party in the National Front under the name Czechoslovak Socialist Party. Early in the 1989 Velvet Revolution it gave dissidents use of its newspaper and buildings, but after 1996 it lost its parliamentary seats and its influence became marginal.