Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party
체코슬로바키아 사회민주노동자당
A Czechoslovak social democratic party that began in 1878 as the Czech organisation of the Austrian social democratic movement and became the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party in 1918. It came first in the 1920 election, but its left wing split off in 1921 to found the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. It was forcibly merged into the Communist Party on 27 June 1948, continued in exile, and was re-established after 1989.
In depth
On 7 April 1878 a founding congress held in an inn in Břevnov, Prague, created the Czechoslavonic Social Democratic Party in Austria as the Czech organisation within the Austrian social democratic movement. From 1888 to 1893 it formed part of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria, and at a congress in České Budějovice in December 1893 it became the tactically and organisationally independent Czechoslavonic Social Democratic Workers' Party. Adhering to the Second International, it demanded the eight-hour day and universal suffrage, and in the 1907 Imperial Council election it stood independently for the first time and came first in the Czech lands. During the First World War the party rejected resistance activity and remained loyal to Austria-Hungary.
At its congress in December 1918 the party renamed itself the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers' Party and absorbed the Slovak social democrats. It won the 1919 municipal elections decisively with 32.5%, and Vlastimil Tusar became the first social democratic prime minister; in the first parliamentary election in 1920 it came first with 25.7% and 74 seats. A dispute over joining the Comintern, however, led the left wing to hold its own congress in September 1920, and after the left's general strike was suppressed in December, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was founded in May 1921. In the 1925 election the party's vote fell to 8.9%.
The party returned to government after winning 13% in 1929, and at its 1930 congress adopted a new programme revising its Marxist tradition. It then took part as a smaller member in the coalition governments until 1938, cooperated with the German Social Democratic Workers' Party in Czechoslovakia and helped German and Austrian émigrés after 1933. In autumn 1938 it merged with other left-wing groups into the National Labour Party, which was banned after the Nazi occupation of March 1939.
On 19 October 1945 the party was restored as Czechoslovak Social Democracy, one of the four Czech parties of the National Front, and its chairman Zdeněk Fierlinger became prime minister of the first post-war government. In the 1946 election it came last of the four Czech parties with 15.5%. At the November 1947 congress the centrist Bohumil Laušman was elected chairman and Fierlinger's pro-Communist wing was temporarily defeated, but during the February 1948 coup the party did not join the mass resignation of non-Communist ministers. On 27 June 1948 it was forcibly merged into the Communist Party; according to the Czech-language source more than 200,000 members refused to sign the merger application. The party then continued in exile with its centre in London and was re-established after the Velvet Revolution of 1989.