History of the Croatian Peasant Party
The Croatian Peasant Party is one of the most important political organizations in Croatia’s history. It worked 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 had wider support among Croats. It was founded in 1904 by the brothers Antun and Stjepan Radić.
Stjepan Radić
The party was established on December 22, 1904, under the name Croatian People’s Peasant Party. It was a progressive people’s party that regarded the Croatian peasantry, at the time the overwhelming 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 the party from its founding until his death on August 8, 1928.
Following Radić’s death, Vladko Maček was elected president of the party, a position he held until he died on May 15, 1964.
After Maček’s death, Dr. Juraj Krnjević was elected president at the party convention of 1965, and he remained in office for the rest of his life. He died in London on January 9, 1988.
Once Croatia had become an independent state, and after many disagreements and the emergence of a number of factions, a unification assembly was held in Canada on May 20, 1991. Drago Stipac was elected president in Croatia and led the party until 1994, when illness forced him to resign. Zlatko Tomčić became president in 1994. He was followed by Josip Friščić from 2005 to 2012, Branko Hrg from 2012 to 2016, and Krešo Beljak, who has led the party since 2016.
History of HSS in Canada
On June 20, 1928, in the National Assembly of Yugoslavia, Puniša Račić, a member of the Radical Party, opened fire on Croatian deputies. He killed Đuro Basariček and Pavle Radić and wounded Ivan Pernar, Ivan Granđa and Stjepan Radić, who died of his injuries on August 8 of that year. King Alexander I Karađorđević seized on the assassination as an excuse to proclaim the 6 January Dictatorship and outlaw every political party.
In the aftermath, a number of leading HSS members left Yugoslavia, among them the general secretary of HSS, Dr. Juraj Krnjević. His first message to Croatian emigrants in Canada came at the end of 1929, through “Hrvatski glas” (The Croatian Voice), a newspaper Petar Stanković had started in Winnipeg in March of that year. Out of the contacts and correspondence that Dr. Juraj Krnjević and Ing. August Košutić kept up with Croats abroad grew the idea that the emigrants needed a Croatian peasant organization of their own, through which they could carry on the fight for Croatian national interests. Such organizations appeared first 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 community in the region, and it included several prominent people who had been active in the Croatian peasant movement before they left home. The driving force was Franjo Duralija, a native of Žumberak and a former regional representative of HSS. At a meeting at the end of 1929, it was agreed to call a public founding assembly of HSS. That assembly met on January 5, 1930, and established the HSS organization in Toronto, with Franjo Duralija as its president. The Toronto branch had already been working for a year when the Noranda organization was founded. Noranda proved so active that within its first year it had built a handsome “Croatian National Home.”
To spread the ideas of the Radić brothers more widely, the Toronto organization formed a special committee whose job was to set up HSS branches in other parts of Canada. The committee began visiting Croatian settlements across southern Ontario, and its visits led to the founding of the new “Cooksville,” “Hamilton,” “Welland,” “Windsor” and “Sudbury” branches, followed shortly by organizations in Kirkland Lake, Schumacher, Port Colborne and Winnipeg. 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 be entrusted with calling the first general assembly of the Canadian HSS organizations.
The first HSS convention in Canada took place in Toronto on January 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1932. The gathering was marked by the protest of Canadian Croats against the brutal Belgrade regime’s oppression of the Croatian people, and its purpose was to launch Croatian peasant organizations right across Canada. The convention also elected the first Main Committee of HSS Canada: Franjo Duralija, president; Ivan Krznarić and Adam Žunac, vice-presidents; Stanko Laus and Ivan Herceg, secretaries; and Kuzmo Krušelj and Stjepan Bradica, treasurers. Petar Stanković was elected commissioner for propaganda, and “Hrvatski glas” became the official newspaper of HSS Canada.
The second convention of HSS Canada met in Hamilton on April 6, 7 and 8, 1933. It adopted the “Rules of the HSS Organizations in Canada,” which took effect immediately. The rules were modelled on those of “Seljačka sloga” (Peasant Concord) and drafted to comply with Canadian law. A new Main Committee was elected, with Zvonimir Restek as president.
The third convention, held in Welland on April 4, 5 and 6, 1935, settled all of HSS’s organizational questions. It also resolved to support, by every means available, the Croatian people’s struggle for the free right to self-determination, a struggle in which the members stood unwaveringly behind the leader and president of the Croatian people, Vladko Maček.
With the structure of the HSS organizations in Canada complete, new branches kept opening across the country, and a convention was held every three years.