Young Czech Party
청년체코당
A liberal and nationalist party of the Czech lands of Austria-Hungary that split from the Czech National Party in 1874. Its official name was the National Liberal Party and its members were known as Young Czechs. Advocating universal manhood suffrage and anticlericalism, it ended the dominance of the Old Czechs in the 1891 Imperial Council election, and in 1918 it merged with other parties into the Czech State-Rights Democracy.
In depth
According to the Czech source, two currents, the Old Czechs and the Young Czechs, took shape within the Czech National Party from about 1863, and in the early 1870s they clashed over the Old Czechs’ passive resistance, that is, abstention from parliament. In 1874 seven deputies of the National Party broke with that policy and took their seats, and on 27 December that year the National Liberal Party was formally founded with Karel Sladkovský as its first chairman.
The party claimed the legacy of Karel Havlíček Borovský and demanded universal suffrage for all men and individual freedom. It sought to reduce the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and opposed the politically represented conservative Bohemian nobility. The English source notes that it drew wide support from professionals, the petty bourgeoisie and peasants. In 1879 it entered the Imperial Council together with the Old Czechs and the conservative nobility, forming the Czech Club that supported the Taaffe government.
It won 37 seats in the 1889 Bohemian Diet election, and in the 1891 Imperial Council election it swept the ethnically Czech districts, ending the dominance of the Old Czech party. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk joined in 1890 and sat in the Imperial Council for the party in 1891–1893. A crisis in 1897 sent the radical left into the Radical Progressive Party and Václav Klofáč and others into the Czech National Social Party, and Karel Kramář became the new chairman.
In 1907, in the first Imperial Council election under universal manhood suffrage, the party came second behind the Agrarians. When the First World War broke out, Kramář, Alois Rašín and others were arrested and sentenced to death, later pardoned. On 9 February 1918 the party merged with the State-Rights Progressive Party and a large part of the Progressive Party to form the Czech State-Rights Democracy, which after Czechoslovak independence became the Czechoslovak National Democracy.