History of the Croatian Peasant Party
The Croatian Peasant Party ranks among the most significant 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. True to its principles, it was a progressive people’s party, and it saw the Croatian peasantry, which then made up the vast majority of Croatian society, as the bedrock of the Croatian nation. In 1920 it became the Croatian Republican Peasant Party, and later, under pressure from the authorities, it adopted 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.
When Radić died, Vladko Maček was elected the party’s new president, an office he held until his own death on May 15, 1964.
After Maček’s death, the 1965 party convention elected Dr. Juraj Krnjević as president, and he remained in that post 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 emergence of several factions, a unification assembly took place in Canada on May 20, 1991, while in Croatia Drago Stipac was elected president. He held the office until 1994, when ill health forced him to resign. Zlatko Tomčić served as president from 1994, followed by Josip Friščić from 2005 to 2012, Branko Hrg from 2012 to 2016, and Krešo Beljak from 2016 to this day.
History of HSS in Canada
On June 20, 1928, during a sitting of the National Assembly of Yugoslavia, the Radical deputy Puniša Račić opened fire, killing Đuro Basariček and Pavle Radić and wounding Ivan Pernar, Ivan Granđa and Stjepan Radić, who died of his wounds on August 8 of that year. King Alexander I Karađorđević seized on the assassination as a pretext to proclaim the January 6 Dictatorship, under which all political parties were banned.
In the aftermath, a number of leading HSS figures left Yugoslavia, among them the party’s general secretary, Dr. Juraj Krnjević. He first addressed Croatian emigrants in Canada at the end of 1929, through the pages of “Hrvatski glas” (The Croatian Voice), a newspaper Petar Stanković had launched in Winnipeg in March of that year. The contacts and letters that Dr. Juraj Krnjević and the engineer August Košutić kept up with Croats abroad gave rise to the idea that emigrants needed a Croatian peasant organization of their own, one through which they could carry on the fight for Croatia’s national interests. Such organizations sprang up first in the United States, and shortly afterwards in Canada.
Canada’s first Croatian peasant organization was founded in Toronto. The city had the largest Croatian community in the region, and it included several prominent people who had taken an active part in the Croatian peasant movement before leaving the homeland. The driving force was Franjo Duralija, a former regional representative of HSS who came from Žumberak. At a meeting at the end of 1929, those present agreed to call a public founding assembly of HSS. That assembly met on January 5, 1930, and established the HSS organization in Toronto, electing Franjo Duralija as its president. The Toronto branch had been at work for a year before the organization in Noranda was founded, and the Noranda group proved so active that it built a fine “Croatian National Home” in its very first year.
To spread the ideas of the Radić brothers 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 communities of southern Ontario, and its visits produced 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 formed in Vancouver, BC, Huntsville, ON, and Stellarton, NS, and in 1934 in Flin Flon, MB, and Iron Springs, Alta.
With ten HSS branches now in place across Canada, Dr. Krnjević proposed that the Toronto organization be entrusted with calling the first general assembly of the Canadian HSS organizations.
Toronto hosted the first HSS convention in Canada on January 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1932. The gathering stood as a protest by Canadian Croats against the violence of the Belgrade regime toward the Croatian people, and it set itself the task of launching Croatian peasant organizations 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.
The second convention of HSS Canada met in Hamilton on April 6, 7 and 8, 1933. Delegates adopted the “Rules of the HSS Organizations in Canada,” which took effect at once. The rules were patterned on those of Seljačka sloga (Peasant Concord) and drafted to conform with Canadian law. A new Main Committee was elected, headed by Zvonimir Restek.
At the third convention, held in Welland on April 4, 5 and 6, 1935, all of HSS’s organizational questions were settled, and delegates resolved to support by every available means the Croatian people’s struggle for free self-determination, standing firmly behind Vladko Maček, the leader and president of the Croatian people.
With the structure of the HSS organizations in Canada now complete, new branches kept spreading across the country, and conventions were held every three years.