History of the Croatian Peasant Party
The Croatian Peasant Party ranks among the most significant political organizations in Croatia’s history. It fought for the democratization of Croatian society as a whole and for 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 the brothers Antun and Stjepan Radić.
Stjepan Radić
The party came into being on December 22, 1904, under the name Croatian People’s Peasant Party. True to its principles, it was a progressive people’s party, and it saw the Croatian peasantry, who then made up the vast majority of Croatian society, as the backbone of the Croatian nation. In 1920 it became the Croatian Republican Peasant Party, and later, under pressure from the authorities, it took the name it still bears today: the Croatian Peasant Party. Stjepan Radić led it from the day it was founded until his death on August 8, 1928.
When Radić died, Vladko Maček was elected the new party president, and he remained in office until his own death on May 15, 1964.
After Maček’s death, the 1965 party convention elected Dr. Juraj Krnjević president, a post he held for the rest of his life. He died in London on January 9, 1988.
Once Croatia had become an independent state, and after many misunderstandings and the rise of various factions, a unification assembly was held in Canada on May 20, 1991, and Drago Stipac was elected president in Croatia. He served until 1994, when illness forced him to resign. Zlatko Tomčić was president from 1994, followed by Josip Friščić from 2005 to 2012, Branko Hrg from 2012 to 2016, and Krešo Beljak from 2016 to the present day.
History of HSS in Canada
On June 20, 1928, in the National Assembly of Yugoslavia, Puniša Račić 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 January 6 Dictatorship and ban every political party.
In the aftermath, a number of leading HSS members left Yugoslavia, among them the general secretary of HSS, Dr. Juraj Krnjević. He first made contact with Croatian emigrants in Canada late in 1929, through “Hrvatski glas” (The Croatian Voice), the newspaper Petar Stanković had launched in Winnipeg that March. From the ties and letters between Dr. Juraj Krnjević, the engineer August Košutić and Croats abroad came the idea that emigrant Croats needed a Croatian peasant organization of their own, one that would carry on the fight for Croatia’s national interests. The first such organizations were formed in the United States, and Canada soon followed.
The first Croatian peasant organization in Canada was founded in Toronto. The city had the largest Croatian settlement in this part of the world, and among its people were several prominent men who had taken an active part in the Croatian peasant movement back home. The driving force was Franjo Duralija, a former regional representative of HSS from Žumberak. At a meeting late in 1929 it was decided to call a public founding assembly of HSS. That assembly took place on January 5, 1930, and set up the HSS organization in Toronto, with Franjo Duralija as its president. The Toronto branch had been at work for a year before the organization in Noranda was founded. Noranda’s organization proved very active, and within its very first year it had built a handsome “Croatian National Home.”
To help the ideas of the Radić brothers spread further, the Toronto organization formed a special committee whose job was to found HSS branches in other parts of Canada. The committee set out to visit the Croatian settlements of southern Ontario, and its visits bore fruit in new branches in “Cooksville,” “Hamilton,” “Welland,” “Windsor” and “Sudbury,” soon followed by organizations in Kirkland Lake, Schumacher, Port Colborne and Winnipeg. Organizations were then also founded in Vancouver, BC, Huntsville, ON, and Stellarton, NS, and in 1934 in Flin Flon, MB, and Iron Springs, Alta.
With ten HSS branches already in existence in Canada, Dr. Krnjević proposed that the Toronto organization be given the task of calling the first general assembly of the Canadian HSS organizations.
The first HSS convention in Canada met in Toronto on January 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1932. Its proceedings were a protest by Canadian Croats against the violent Belgrade regime’s treatment of the Croatian people, and its mission was to get Croatian peasant organizations started right 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.
HSS Canada held its second convention in Hamilton on April 6, 7 and 8, 1933. The delegates adopted the “Rules of the HSS Organizations in Canada,” which took effect at once. The rules were modelled on those of Seljačka sloga (Peasant Concord) and drafted to comply with Canadian law. A new Main Committee was elected, headed by Zvonimir Restek.
The third convention, held in Welland on April 4, 5 and 6, 1935, dealt with all of HSS’s organizational questions and resolved to support by every available means the Croatian people’s struggle for free self-determination, in which the delegates stood firmly behind the leader and president of the Croatian people, Vladko Maček.
With the structure of the HSS organizations in Canada now complete, new branches kept appearing across the country, and a convention was held every third year.