A History of the Croatian Peasant Party
The Croatian Peasant Party stands among the most important political organizations in Croatia’s history. It championed the democratization of Croatian society as a whole and a complete solution to the Croatian national question, and in the first half of the twentieth century no political party enjoyed wider support among Croats. It was founded in 1904 by two brothers, Antun and Stjepan Radić.
Stjepan Radić
The party was established on December 22, 1904, under the name Croatian People’s Peasant Party. Its principles were those of a progressive people’s party, and it regarded the Croatian peasantry, at that time the overwhelming majority of Croatian society, as the foundation of the Croatian nation. In 1920 it was renamed the Croatian Republican Peasant Party, and later, under pressure from the authorities, it adopted the name it bears today, the Croatian Peasant Party. Stjepan Radić led the party from the day it was founded until his death on August 8, 1928.
When Radić died, Vladko Maček was elected to succeed him as party president, and he remained in office until his own death on May 15, 1964.
After Maček’s death, Dr. Juraj Krnjević was elected president at a party convention in 1965. He held the post for the rest of his life and died in London on January 9, 1988.
Croatia became an independent state, and after many misunderstandings and the emergence of several factions, a unifying assembly was held in Canada on May 20, 1991. In Croatia, Drago Stipac was elected president; he served until 1994, when ill health forced him to resign. Zlatko Tomčić then led the party from 1994, followed by Josip Friščić from 2005 to 2012, Branko Hrg from 2012 to 2016, and Krešo Beljak from 2016 to this day.
A History of HSS in Canada
On June 20, 1928, in the National Assembly of Yugoslavia, Puniša Račić, a member of the Radical Party, shot dead Đuro Basariček and Pavle Radić and wounded Ivan Pernar, Ivan Granđa and Stjepan Radić. Radić died of his wounds on August 8 of that year. King Alexander I Karađorđević seized on the assassination as an excuse to impose the 6 January Dictatorship and outlaw every political party.
In the aftermath, a number of leading HSS members left Yugoslavia, including the party’s general secretary, Dr. Juraj Krnjević. His first message to Croatian emigrants in Canada came at the end of 1929, in the pages of “Hrvatski glas” (Croatian Voice), a newspaper that Petar Stanković had started in Winnipeg in March of that year. Through the ties and correspondence that Dr. Juraj Krnjević and Ing. August Košutić kept up with Croats abroad, the idea took shape that emigrant Croats needed a Croatian peasant organization of their own, one through which the fight for Croatian national interests could go on. Such organizations were set up first in the United States and, not long after, in Canada.
Canada’s first Croatian peasant organization was founded in Toronto, then home to the largest Croatian community in that part of the country. Among the emigrants were several prominent members who had taken an active part in the Croatian peasant movement back in the homeland. The chief organizer was Franjo Duralija, a native of Žumberak and a former HSS regional representative. A meeting at the end of 1929 decided to call a public founding assembly of HSS, and at that assembly, held on January 5, 1930, the HSS organization in Toronto was established, with Franjo Duralija elected its president. The Toronto branch was already a year old when the organization in Noranda was founded. Noranda’s was a very lively organization: within its first year it had managed to build a handsome “Croatian National Home”.
To give the Radić brothers’ ideas a wider reach, the Toronto organization formed a special committee whose job was to found HSS branches in other Canadian towns. The committee set out on a tour of the Croatian communities of southern Ontario, and its visits led to new branches in Cooksville, Hamilton, Welland, Windsor and Sudbury, with organizations in Kirkland Lake, Schumacher, Port Colborne and Winnipeg following shortly afterwards. Organizations were then also formed in Vancouver (BC), Huntsville (ON) and Stellarton (NS), and in 1934 in Flin Flon (MB) and Iron Springs (Alta.).
Since there were by then ten HSS branches in Canada, Dr. Krnjević proposed that the Toronto organization take on the job of convening the first general assembly of the Canadian HSS organizations.
The first HSS convention in Canada met in Toronto from January 24 to 27, 1932. It was held in a spirit of protest by Canadian Croats against the violence of the Belgrade regime toward the Croatian people, and its purpose was to get Croatian peasant organizations started all across Canada. The convention also elected the first Main Committee of HSS Canada: Franjo Duralija as president, Ivan Krznarić and Adam Žunac as vice-presidents, Stanko Laus and Ivan Herceg as secretaries, and Kuzmo Kruselj and Stjepan Bradica as treasurers. Petar Stanković was elected commissioner for propaganda, and “Hrvatski glas” became the official newspaper of HSS Canada.
The second convention of HSS Canada took place in Hamilton from April 6 to 8, 1933. Delegates adopted the “Rules of the HSS Organizations in Canada”,, which came into force at once. They were modelled on the rules of “Seljačka sloga” (Peasant Concord) and written to comply with Canadian law. A new Main Committee was elected, with Zvonimir Restek as president.
The third convention, held in Welland from April 4 to 6, 1935, settled all of HSS’s organizational questions. It also resolved to support, by every available means, the Croatian people’s struggle for free self-determination, in which Canada’s HSS organizations stood unwaveringly behind Vladko Maček, leader and president of the Croatian people.
Once HSS had built its organizational structure in Canada, branches went on multiplying across the country, and a convention was held every three years.