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The Young Czech Party (1874-1914): An Appraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Stanley B. Winters
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Extract

For forty eventful years, ending with the outbreak of the First World War, the Young Czech Party waged an unremitting struggle on behalf of Czech national interests within the limited constitutional framework of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Political activity for such a span of time would be enough to insure the party a niche in history, but in addition it dominated Czech politics for sixteen of those years and enlisted politicians of the caliber of Kaizl, Kramář, Rašín, and briefly Masaryk under its banner in their quest for elective office. The intent of this article is to evaluate the party's contributions to the development of the modern Czech political system by outlining its history and general orientation and by comparing party platforms with achievements.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , September 1969 , pp. 426 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1969

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References

This article is a revised version of a paper read to the Fourth Congress of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in America at Georgetown University on August 31, 1968.

1. For example, Seton-Watson, Robert W., A History of the Czechs and Slovaks (London, 1943)Google Scholar; Kamil, Krofta, Dějiny československé, rev. ed. (Prague, 1946)Google Scholar; Münch, Hermann, Böhmische Tragödie: Das Schicksal Mitteleuropas im Lichte der tschechischen Frage (Braunschweig, 1949)Google Scholar; Thomson, S. Harrison, Czechoslovakia in European History, 2nd enl. ed. (Princeton, 1953)Google Scholar; Istoriia Chekhoslovakii, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1955- 60), vol. 2, ed. S. A. Nikitin et al. (1959).

2. Křížek, Jurij, T. G. Masaryk a česká politika: Politické vystoupeni českých “realistů“ v letech 1887-1893 (Prague, 1959)Google Scholar; Havránek, Jan, Boj za všeobecné přímé a rovné hlasovací právo roku 1893, Rozpravy ČSAV, vol. 74, Řada společenských věd, no. 2 (Prague, 1964).Google Scholar

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4. Josef, Kaizl, Z mého života, ed. Tobolka, Zdeněk, 3 vols, in 4 (Prague, 1908-14)Google Scholar; Kramář, Karel, Pamětí, ed. Hoch, Karel, 2nd ed. (Prague, 1938)Google Scholar; Gustav, Eim, Politické úvahy, ed. Penìžek, Josef (Prague, 1898)Google Scholar; Penìžek, Josef, Aus bewegten Zeiten, 1895 bis 1905 (Vienna, 1906)Google Scholar; idem, , Z mých pamětí s let 1878-1918, 3 vols. (Prague, 1922-28)Google Scholar; Hlaváč, Bedřich, Videň a j . vzpomínky (Prague, 1932).Google Scholar Two repositories of the papers of many Young Czechs are the Literární archiv Národniho musea and the Památnik národního písemnictví na Strahově in Prague.

5. The party's activities in the 1880s and 1890s are discussed in essays by H. Gordon Skilling and the author in a forthcoming volume, The Czech National Renascence of the Nineteenth Century, ed. Peter Brock and H. Gordon Skilling.

6. This article concentrates on Young Czech activities in Bohemia and omits the parallel development of an allied liberal nationalist party in Moravia under Adolf Stránský (1855-1931).

7. On Sladkovský and the origins of the Young Czech tendency see Tobolka, , Politické dějiny, 2: 339–58.Google Scholar

8. Češi a Poláci v minulosti, 2 vols. (Prague, 1964-67), vol. 2, ed. Václav žáček (1967), pp. 259-62.

9. Stanley Z., Pech, “Passive Resistance of the Czechs, 1863-1879,” Slavonic and East European Review, 36 (1958): 434–52Google Scholar

10. Jaroslav Purš, “Tábory v českých zemich v letech 1868-1871 (příspěvek k problematice národního hnuti), ” československý časopis historický, 6 (1958): 234-66, 446-70, 661-90 (hereafter cited as ČSČH); Přehled československých dějin, 2, pt. 1: 383-424.

11. These distinctions on the status of language in Austrian law and practice are discussed in Kann, Robert A., Das Nationalitdtenproblem der Habsburgermonarchie, 2 vols. (Graz and Cologne, 1964), 1: 190–93.Google Scholar

12. Havránek, Jan, “Die ökonomische und politische Lage der Bauernschaft in den böhmischen Ländern in den letzten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, pt. 2 (Berlin, 1966), pp. 131–32 Google Scholar; Křížek, Jurij, “Krise cukrovarnictví v českých zemích v osmdesátých letech minulého století a její význam pro vzrůst rolnického hnuti,” ČSČH> 6 (1958): 59.Google Scholar As a result of the elections the party's strength in the Diet rose to thirty-nine seats compared to the Old Czech's fifty-eight, whereas before the elections Young Czech strength had been about one-ninth their rivals'.

13. Gustav, Kolmer, Parlament und Verfassung in Österreich, 8 vols. (Vienna, 1902-14)Google Scholar, vol. 5, 1891-95 (1909), p. 13; Jenks, William A., Austria Under the Iron Ring, 1879-1893 (Charlottesville, Va., 1965), pp. 277–78.Google Scholar

14. The standard work on the Badeni ordinances but unfavorable to the Czechs is Berthold, Sutter, Die badenischen Sprachenverordnungen von 1897, 2 vols. (Graz and Cologne, 1960-66).Google Scholar See the Czech side in Tobolka, Politické dějiny, 3, pt. 2: 138-53; and the evaluation of Badeni in Kann, Nationalitatenproblem, 1: 195-97.

15. Young Czech deputy strength in Parliament dropped from fifty-three members (in 1901) to eighteen (1907); the Agrarian Party rose from five to twenty-eight, the Czechoslav Social Democrats from two to twenty-four. For tables of party representation see Handbuch der Geschichte der böhmischen Lander, ed. Karl Bosl, 4 vols. (Stuttgart 1967-), 3: 460-63; Jenks, William A., The Austrian Electoral Reform of 1907 (New York, 1950), p. 215.Google Scholar The tables do not always denote actual voting strength, because coalitions formed from time to time among the parties enabled them to vote en bloc.

16. See the party's founding manifesto of December 25, 1874, reprinted in Srb, Politicks dějiny, 1: 478-80, esp. sections 1-3.

17. The most comprehensive Czech accounts of the Vienna Compromise are Adámek, Karel, “Z pamětí ku pětadvacetiletému jubileu vdefiskych limluv z r. 1890,” Česká revue, 1914-15, pp. 257–61, 353-65, 416-25, Google Scholar and Karel, Kazbunda, “Krise české politiky a vídeňská jednáni o t. zv. punktace r. 1890,” Český časopis historický, 40 (1934): 80–108, 310-46, 491-528; 41 (1935): 41-82, 294-320, 514-54.Google Scholar Cf. the account based on German sources in Jenks, Iron Ring, pp. 239-74.

18. Josef, Kolejka, “Moravský pakt z roku 1905,” ČSČH, 4 (1956): 590–615.Google Scholar The Moravian agreement rejected German claims for binational partition of the region but retained the old curial voting system to the numerical disadvantage of the Czechs in Parliament, although their majority in the Diet was secured.

19. A Young Czech leader defined the state right as ”… the public law of Bohemia. The right of the Hapsburg dynasty to the Bohemian crown according to the law of succession of the Pragmatic Sanction [of 1720], the right of the legal representatives of the three Bohemian lands, in the event of the extinction of the dynasty, freely to elect a new king, the right to the indivisibility and unity of the three lands, and the right of the unrestricted legislative and administrative independence of the lands of the Bohemian crown”; see Kramář, Karel, české státní právo, 2nd ed. (Prague, 1914), p. 51.Google Scholar A German edition appeared as Das böhmisches Staatsrecht (Vienna, 1896).

20. Havránek, Jan, “The Development of Czech Nationalism,” in Austrian History Yearbook, vol. 3 (Houston, 1967)Google Scholar, The Nationality Problem in the Habsburg Monarchy in the Nineteenth Century: A Critical Appraisal, pt. 2, The National Minorities, p. 252. Kramář stated that the party adopted the state-right slogan to restore national self-confidence after the failure of Old Czech passive resistance; see his essay, “Dějiny české politiky od vstupu Čechů na říšskou radu až do doby současné, ” in Česká politika, ed. Zdeněk Tobolka, 5 vols, in 6 (Prague, 1908-13), vol. 3, Dějiny české politiky novi doby (1909), pp. 753-54.

21. Plaschka, Richard G., Von Palacký bis Pekař: Geschichtswissenschaft und Nationalbcwttsstein bei den Tschechen (Graz and Cologne, 1955), pp. 45–47 Google Scholar; Eugen, Lemberg, “Volksbegriff und Staatsideologie der Tschechen,” in Das böhmische Staatsrecht in den deutsch-tschechischen Auseinandersetsungen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Birke, Ernst and Oberdorffer, Kurt (Marburg/Lahn, 1960), pp. 44–63Google Scholar; Valentin, Urfus, “K vzájemnému poměru českého státoprávniho programu a předbřeznové stavovské opozice v Čechách,” Právněhistorické studie, 13 (1967): 86.Google Scholar The process of an intellectual conversion from emotional nationalism to the state-right viewpoint is described in Kramář, pamětí, pp. 66-70.

22. Křížek, T. G. Masaryk, pp. 146-54; Tobolka, Zdeněk, “Počátky Politického realismu českého,” Česká revue, 1910-11, pp. 193–210.Google Scholar

23. Masaryk, T. G., Nynějšiíkrise a desorganisace mladočeské strany, Knihovnička Času no. 28 (Prague, 1903), p. 8.Google Scholar For a typed copy of this pamphlet I am indebted to Bruce Garver, Department of History, Yale University. See also Srb, Politické dějiny, 1: 830.

24. Kramář's status as having been “the first author of plans for a new Central Europe“ is endorsed in Henryk Batowski, “Plane zur Teilung der Habsburgermonarchie im Ersten Weltkrieg, ” Österreichische Osthejte, 10, no. 3 (1968): 129, 138n. Masaryk is declared the first to have proposed an independent Czechoslovakia in October 1914 by Karel, Pichlik, “První projekt samostatného Československa z podzimu 1914,” Historie a vojenství, 1966, no. 3, p. 405.Google Scholar

25. Kramář, Česká politika, 3: 638.

26. Ibid., pp. 723, 747.

27. Arthur, Skedl and Egon, Weiss, eds., Der politische Nachlass des Grajen Eduard Taaffe (Vienna, 1922), pp. 634–36 Google Scholar; Masaryk, Desorganisace, p. 38.

28. Čapek, Karel, Hovory s T. G. Masarykem (Prague, 1937), pp. 95–97 Google Scholar; Kramář, pamětí, pp. 80-81, 92-93. This controversy, which eventually involved much of the Czech political and intellectual elite, centered on the disputed authenticity of poetic fragments, allegedly of great antiquity, that were discovered in 1817-18 by the Romantic poet Vaclav Hanka and were accepted by patriots and some scholars as proving that an indigenous Czech literature antedated the influx of German culture into Bohemia. Although regarded as forgeries, the poems have had a great influence upon Czech literature. See Harkins, William E., The Russian Folk Epos in Czech Literature, 1800-1900 (New York, 1951), p. 57–63.Google Scholar

29. The Nymburk congress concentrated decision-making and public relations in the hands of the party's executive committee and parliamentary deputies’ club (which later led to tensions between them) and condemned independent actions by “a special political party or progressive faction.” The resolutions of the congress are reprinted in Srb, Politické dějiny, 1: 907-10.

30. Krofta, Dějiny československé, pp. 682-95, cites many cultural personalities and tendencies; see also Odložilik, Otakar, “T. G. Masaryk and the Czech ‘Nineties,” The Spirit of Czechoslovakia, 6, no. 1 (1945): 10–12.Google Scholar The nineties, according to Kramář, were the years when Austria discovered the existence of a Czech nation “which was able to achieve something more than to send to Vienna apprentices, laborers, and domestic servants”; see Česká politika, 3: 573. The relationship between the literary ferment of the era and politics is depicted in Jifi, Brabec, Poezie na předělu doby: Vývojové tendence české poezie koncem let osmdesátých a na poĉátku let devadesátých XIX. století (Prague, 1964), esp. pp. 11–18.Google Scholar

31. For the following analysis the author used, in addition to works cited below, Young Czech declarations issued on these occasions: 1874, formation of the party; 1878, organization of the united St áoprávní deputies’ club in the Bohemian Diet; 1879, decision to participate in Parliament; 1880, response to German attacks upon Czech minorities; 1883, attack upon new school regulations; 1889, elections to the Bohemian Diet; 1890, critique of the Vienna Compromise conference; 1891, elections to Parliament; 1894, Nymburk party congress; 1895, elections to the Bohemian Diet; 1897, elections to Parliament; 1901, elections to the Bohemian Diet and to Parliament; 1904, German obstruction in Parliament; 1907, elections to Parliament; 1908, formation of cabinet of Count Bienerth; 1910, formation of “Slavic Union” bloc in Parliament; 1913, dissolution of Bohemian Diet.

32. Masaryk, Desorganisace, p. 18.

33. Srb, Politicks dějiny, 1: 479.

34. Kramář, Česká politika, 3: 737; Jenks, Austrian Electoral Reform, pp. 166-67.

35. Hans Mommsen, Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitätenfrage itn habsburgischen Vielvölkerstaat, vol. 1, Das Ringen um die supranational Integration der zisleithanischen Arbeiterbewegung (1867-1907) (Vienna, 1963), pp. 283-86. The Czechoslav Social Democrats in 1897 also issued an attack upon the state-right program that further alienated them from the Young Czechs; see Červinka, František, Český nacionalismus v XIX. stoleti (Prague, 1965), p. 180–82.Google Scholar

36. In one of Kramář's speeches in behalf of universal suffrage he stated, ”… surely an organic social reform is always better than a violent revolution”; Stenographische Protokolle iiber die Sitsungen des Hauses der Abgeordneten des österreichischen Reicltsrathes, XVII Session, Mar. IS, 1906, p. 35, 249 (hereafter cited as SPA). The Social Democratic organ Rovnost in Brno on June 27, 1906, noted that Kramář recognized the revolutionary currents in Russia, whereas the Czech liberal press only made superficial comments; see Léta 1906-1907: Prameny k revolučnímu hnutí a ohlasu první ruské revoluce v českých zemích v letech 1905-1907, ed. Oldřiška Kodedová (Prague, 1962), p. 302.,

37. Speech of Kramář, SPA, XI Session, Dec. 10, 1895, pp. 21, 963-64; Srb, Politické dějiny, 2: 48-50. Thun had kept Prague under martial law since September 1893 in order to harass Czech newspapers and stifle the nationalist and socialist movements.

38. Srb, Dějiny národa českého, 2: 310-11.

39. Sís, Vladimir, Karel Kramář: Život a dilo, sktzza (Prague, 1930), p. 178–79.Google Scholar On the struggle within the party over acceptance of the policy see Tobolka, Zdeněk, “Boj o positivní politiku, ” Česká revue, 1907-8, pp. 128–34.Google Scholar

40. Suzanne G., Konirsh, “Constitutional Aspects of the Struggle Between Germans and Czechs in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,” Journal of Modern History, 27, no. 3 (1955): 231–61.Google Scholar The circumstances surrounding the dissolution of the Bohemian Diet as seen from Austrian documents are discussed in F. B. M. Fowkes, “The Policy of the Habsburg Monarchy Towards the Bohemian Question, 1913-1918” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1967), pp. 60-114.

41. Roubik, František, Bibliografie časopisectva v Čechách z let 1863-1895 (Prague, 1936)Google Scholar lists Bohemian newspapers with their party affiliations, editors, and publishers.

42. století, Půl “Národnich listů” almanack, 1860-1910 (Prague, 1910), pp. 9–35, 40-45Google Scholar; “Národní listy” jubilejní sborník, 1861-1941 (Prague, 1941), pp. 91-94

43. In 1867 Rieger indiscreetly voiced pro-Russian sentiments at the Slav Congress in Moscow; in 1869 in a secret memorandum to Napoleon III he solicited French sympathy for the Austrian Slavs; see Stanley Z., Pech, “František Ladislav Rieger: Some Critical Observations,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2 (1957): 62–65.Google Scholar

44. On this episode involving Július Grégr and Count Franz Thun see Křížek, T. G. Masaryk, p. 321, n. 354; Skedl and Weiss, eds., Politische Nachlass, p. 616; Holeček, Josef, Tragédie Julia Grégra (Prague, 1911-14), pp. 427–42.Google Scholar

45. Kramář, Pamětí, p. 83; Bradley, J. F. N., “Czech Pan-Slavism Before the First World War,” Slavonic and East European Review, 40 (1961-62): 193–94.Google Scholar

46. “La Situation politique en Autriche, ” Annates de I'École libre des sciences politiques, 6 (1891): 662-81; “L'Avenir de I'Autriche, ” Revue de Paris, 1, pt. 1, no. 3 (1899): 577-600; “Europe and the Bohemian Question, ” National Review, 40 (October 1902): 183-205. For the official reaction to some of these writings see Irwin, Abrams, “The Austrian Question at the Turn of the Century,” Journal of Central European Affairs, 4 (1944): 186–201Google Scholar; also Křížek, Jurij, “Ceska buržoasní politika a ‘ceska otázka’ v letech 1900-1914,” ČSČH, 6 (1958): 636.Google Scholar

47. This was true of all the Czech parties; see Tobolka, Politické dějiny, 3, pt. 2, pp. 622-25, and 4: 47-57; also Zeman, Z. A. B., The Break-Up of the Habsburg Empire, 1914-1918: A Study in National and Social Revolution (London, 1961), p. 42–46.Google Scholar

48. Of twenty-four listed Czech participants in the Prague Neo-Slav Congress of 1908, seven were active party members (Kramář was congress chairman), two were former party members, and seven belonged to other middle-class parties; see Jednání I. přípravného slovanského sjezdu v Praze 1908 (Prague, 1910), chap. 1. A useful recent discussion among the growing literature, especially Marxist, on Neo-Slavism is Dějiny česko-ruských vstahů, vol. 1, 1770-1917, ed. Václav Čejchan (Prague, 1967), pp. 322-30. Helpful is Josef Jirásek, Rusko a my. Dějiny vstahu československo-ruských od nejstarších dob až do roku 1914, 2nd rev. ed., 4 vols. (Prague, 1945-46), 4: 75-98.

49. At Young Czech suggestion a coalition of South Slav and Czech deputies in Parliament, the first of several, was formed in November 1893. Slovak awareness of Young Czech efforts is noted in Hodža, Milan, Články, řeči, štúdie, 4 vols. (Prague, 1930-31), 2: 124–25, 127, 140–41, 174-75, 238-42.Google Scholar Young Czech influence on Slovene liberalism was visible in the Slovene tábor movement (1868-71), political fission into a “Young Slovene” and “Old Slovene” grouping, and Slovene participation to some extent in Neo-Slavism; see Gestrin, Ferdo and Melik, Vasilij, Slovenska sgodovina, 1813-1914 (Ljubljana, 1950), pp. 94–96, 138Google Scholar; Kabrda, Josef, Kolejka, Josef, and Pražák, Richard, Dějiny národů střední a jihovýchodn í Evropy, 2 vols. (Prague, 1963-66), vol. 2 Google Scholar, 70 léta 19. století—1918, pp. 56, 122-24; Havránková, Růžena, “Česká. veřejnost na pomoc národněosvobozovacímu boji jižních Slovanů 1875-1878,” Slovanské historické studie, 6 (1966): 5–53.Google Scholar

50. Masaryk, Desorganisace, p. 38, noted that inability to use one's native tongue was “a mark of political slavery.”

51. Srb, Politické dějiny, 1: 907.

52. Jan, Kapras, historický vývoj Českého programu jasykového (Prague, 1911), p. 38 Google Scholar; Kramář, Česká politika, 3: 775; Penìžek, Z mých pamětí, 2: 52.

53. Kramář, , Problémy české politiky: Dvě řeči (Prague, 1913), p. 14.Google Scholar

54. Tobolka, Politické dějiny, 3, pt. 2, pp. 146-47.

55. Srb, Politické dějiny, 1: 480.

56. Jaroslav, Purs, Delnicke hnuti v českých zemích, 1849-1867 (Prague, 1961), p. 124–27.Google Scholar

57. For a spirited defense of the party's record on social problems see Kramář, , Odpověd, českosl. sociálním demokratům (Prague, 1911)Google Scholar, text of a speech delivered on May 21, 1911.

58. Worth noting in this connection are the efforts of Jan Kaftan (1841-1909), Young Czech parliamentary deputy and civil engineer, to expand and modernize the Austrian canal and river network and to nationalize private railroads.

59. Jurij Křížek, Die wirtschajtlichen Grundzüge des österreichisch-ungarischen Imperialismus in der Vorkriegszeit (1900-1914), ČSAV, Rozpravy, vol. 73, Řada společenských věd, no. 14 (Prague, 1963), p. 81–84.Google Scholar

60. See the party's immediate prewar program in Jan, Heidler, české politické strany v Čechách, na Moravě a ve Slezku (Prague, 1914), p. 21–23.Google Scholar

61. Kořalka, Jiři, “La Montée du pangermanisme et rAutriche-Hongrie,” Historica, 10 (1965): 213–53Google Scholar; Sutter, Sprachenverordnungen, 1: 254-55.

62. Steed, Henry Wickham, The Hapsburg Monarchy (London, 1913), p. 124 Google Scholar