Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Leader of an Independent Party

  • Chapter
T. G. Masaryk

Part of the book series: St Antony’s/Macmillan Series ((STANTS))

  • 26 Accesses

Abstract

Up to the end of the century Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk had stood for a non-political politics and opposed making Realism into a political party. In spite of his criticisms of other parties for not offering a satisfactory political programme, he had not set forth a clearcut and substantial programme of his own. The reaction to his writings, however, indicated that the time had come for open political action. Especially after the adoption of the Nymburk programme in 1897, Masaryk was increasingly hostile to the Young Czechs. Čas, soon to become a daily newspaper, provided a vehicle for vehement criticism of that party. Meanwhile differences between Masaryk and his two Realist colleagues, Kaizl and Kramář, had mounted and led to the breakup of the movement. Realism came to be represented by the person of Masaryk and a small band of devoted younger followers, such as Jan Herben, Josef Gruber and František Drtina. It was this group which drafted the first ‘framework’ programme of the People’s (Realist) party, which was adopted at a founding conference in March and April 1900.1 This programme, revised somewhat in 1906, and then elaborated in 1912, as the programme of the Progressive party, remained the basis of Masaryk’s political actions down to the end of the Monarchy.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Roland J. Hoffmann, T. G. Masaryk und die tschechische Frage (Munich, 1988), pp. 129–34, 167, 171, 210–26;

    Google Scholar 

  2. Zdeněk Tobolka, Politické dějiny československého národa od r. 1848 až do dnešní, doby (Prague, 1936) III, pp. 2, 282–90;

    Google Scholar 

  3. Eva Schmidt-Hartmann, Thomas G. Masaryk’s Realism (Munich, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  4. See also E. Chalupný Vznik české strany pokrokové (Tabor, 1911), for a vitriolic attack on Herben and on Masaryk, whom he accused of being the chief culprit and whom he described as ‘a smug demon who is madly driven on by ambition and for whom all people are but instruments’ (p. 56).

    Google Scholar 

  5. For the earlier progressive movement and Masaryk’s relationship with it, see above, Chapter 1. For details of the emergence of the Progressive party and its programmes, see Bruce Garver, ‘Masaryk and Czech Politics, 1906–1914’, in T. G. Masaryk (1850–1937), I, Thinker and Politician, edited by Stanley B. Winters (London, 1990), pp. 225–57;

    Google Scholar 

  6. Garver, The Young Czech Party 1874–1901 and the Emergence of a Multi-party System (New Haven, 1978), pp. 231–3, 299–308;

    Google Scholar 

  7. Alois Hajn, Život novinářův, 1894–1930 (Prague, 1930), pp. 121–59, 164–99;

    Google Scholar 

  8. Antonín Hajn, Výbor prací, I, pp. 441–65 (Prague, 1912);

    Google Scholar 

  9. E. K. Rosol, Česká strana pokroková (n. d., 1906) in Politické čtení, no. 4, 1909.

    Google Scholar 

  10. For the programme and speech by Alois Hajn, see Program a úkoly strany radikálně pokrokové (Prague, 1897);

    Google Scholar 

  11. Adolf Srb, Politické dějiny národa českého od počátku doby konstituční (Prague, 1926), II, pp. 199–202, 462–4.

    Google Scholar 

  12. The programme was much weaker than the fuller draft prepared by Alois Hajn, K programu pokrokové strany českoslovanské (Pardubice, 1905), which had clearly opted for natural right as a basis for historic state right and had used the phrase ‘attainment of political power in Austria’, a term not previously used in Masaryk’s writings.

    Google Scholar 

  13. See Hajn, Politické strany u nás (Pardubice, 1903), pp. 38–50.

    Google Scholar 

  14. For this, and the following, see Garver, The Young Czech Party, passim, especially pp. 298–9; and for detail, Richard Fischer, Pokroková Morava, 1893–1918 (Prague, 1937), which gives the 1893 programme (I, pp. 25–6).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Čas, VII, no. ll, pp. 162–4, given in J. Kozák, (ed.), Masaryková práce (Prague, 1930), pp. 100–5.

    Google Scholar 

  16. For the last comment, see Jan Herben, T. G. Masaryk, 3 vols. (Prague, 1926), I, pp. 310, 326–8.

    Google Scholar 

  17. During the first phase (1900–1907) Masaryk continued his scholarly output, re-issuing, sometimes in several languages, important studies written earlier — The Social Question (German, 1899, Russian, 1900 and 1906);

    Google Scholar 

  18. Havlíček (1904, 1906)

    Google Scholar 

  19. and Suicide (1904).

    Google Scholar 

  20. T. G. Masarykovi k šedesátým narozeninám, ed. Edvard Beneš and others (first edition, Prague, 1910;

    Google Scholar 

  21. second edition in Masarykův sborník, ed. V. K. Škrach, (4 vols., Prague, 1930), IV, 435 pp.

    Google Scholar 

  22. The fullest source on the election is Stanislav Jandík, Masaryk na Valašsku; jeho boj o poslanecký mandát (2nd, edn., Prague, 1936), which contains the text of his electoral speech and of clerical campaign documents.

    Google Scholar 

  23. See also B. Kučera, ‘O spojenectví sociální demokracie s Masarykem pří říšských volbách v roce 1907’, Časopis Matice moravské, LXXIII (1955), pp. 166–73.

    Google Scholar 

  24. The most authoritative accounts of the Young Czech party are by Bruce Garver, The Young Czech Party, and by Stanley B. Winters, ‘The Young Czech Party (1874–1914): An Appraisal’, Slavic Review, 28, no. 3 (September 1969), pp. 426–44;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. ‘Kramář, Kaizl and the Hegemony of the Young Czech Party, 1891–1901’, in Peter Brock and H. Gordon Skilling, The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century (Toronto, 1970), pp. 239–53;

    Google Scholar 

  26. Kramář, Poznámky o České politice (Prague, 1906); also in German, Anmerkungen zur böhmischen Politik (Vienna, 1906).

    Google Scholar 

  27. Scholarly accounts of the National Socialist Party are given by Detlef Brandes, ‘Die tschechoslowakischen National-Sozialisten’ in Die Erste Tschechoslowakische Republik als multinationaler Parteienstaat, ed. Karl Bosl (Munich, 1979), pp. 101–53

    Google Scholar 

  28. Adulatory but informative are the works by Bohuslav Šantrůček, Václav Klofáč, 1868–1928 (Prague, 1928);

    Google Scholar 

  29. ‘Sedmnáctiletá’ in his Buřicia tvůrci; vzpomínky, úvahy, kus historic životopisy, 1897–1947 (Prague, 1947), pp. 103–61;

    Google Scholar 

  30. Českoslovenští národní socialiste včera a dnes (Prague, 1946);

    Google Scholar 

  31. and, above all, his massive study, Masaryk a Klofáč, Srovnávácí studie (Prague, 1938).

    Google Scholar 

  32. See also J. Klofáč, ‘Dvácet pět let bojů a práce’, in 25 let práce Československé strany socialistické, 1897–1922 (Prague, 1922).

    Google Scholar 

  33. For communist interpretations, see Josef Harna, Kritika ideologie a programu českého národního socialismu (Prague, 1978), pp. 12–32;

    Google Scholar 

  34. Josef Šafařík, in O úloze bývalé nár. soc. strany (Prague, 1959), pp. 29–43;

    Google Scholar 

  35. Ctíbor Nečas, Balkán a česká politika (Brno, 1972), pp. 81–100.

    Google Scholar 

  36. For the 1897 statement and the 1898 programme, see Srb, Pol. dějiny, II, pp. 217–18, 464–7; for a completer version of the latter (partially censored), see Klofáč, Program a zásady národně-sociální strany (Prague, 1901).

    Google Scholar 

  37. See also Jan Beránek, Rakouský militarismus a boj proti nému v Čechách (Prague, 1955), which, in Stalinist spirit, praises the anti-militarist actions of the masses in 1908–9 and 1912 but criticizes both the National Socialists for their anarchic and petty-bourgeois nationalism, and the Social Democrats for their opportunist efforts to dampen the movement.

    Google Scholar 

  38. For Masaryk’s postwar comments, see Karel Čapek, Hovory s T. G. Masarykem (Prague, 1937), p. 136

    Google Scholar 

  39. Masaryk, Světová revoluce (Prague, 1925), p.12

    Google Scholar 

  40. Karel Pichlík, Zahraniční odboj 1914–1918 bez legend (Prague 1968), pp. 34–5.

    Google Scholar 

  41. On Masaryk and Social Democracy, see inter alia, Hans Mommsen, Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitätenfrage im habsburgischen Vielvölkerstaat (Vienna, 1963), I, espec. pp. 260–70;

    Google Scholar 

  42. Jacques Rupnik, Histoire du Parti communiste tschécoslovaque (Paris, 1981), pp. 29–36;

    Google Scholar 

  43. Of the countless articles and books devoted to the Czech workers’ movement published during the communist period, Jan Galandauer, Od Hainfeldu ke vzniku KSC (Prague, 1986), pp. 115–42, stands out, but barely mentions Masaryk.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Other Marxists caricature Masaryk as a spokesman of the bourgeois class and an enemy of the working class, who had indoctrinated the workers with nationalist and opportunist ideas, e.g. Jurij Křížek, T. G. Masaryk a naše dělnická třída (Praha, 1955);

    Google Scholar 

  45. Z. Šolle, ‘Vliv masarykismu na české’ dělnické hnutí konce minulého století’, Nová mysl, no. 3, March 1954, pp. 286–302.

    Google Scholar 

  46. See a similar Soviet interpretation by M. Silin, A Critique of Masarykism (Moscow, 1975).

    Google Scholar 

  47. Contrast the more positive Marxist interpretation given by Zdeněk Nejedlý, T G Masaryk ve vývoji české společnosti a Čs. statu (Prague, 1950).

    Google Scholar 

  48. See František Soukup, Revoluce práce (Prague, 1938), I, pp. 48, 613–23; Šantrůček, Masaryk and Klofáč, pp. 212–13.

    Google Scholar 

  49. For good discussion of the dialectic of nationalism and socialism within Czech Social Democracy, see Jacques Rupnik, ‘The Czech Socialists and the Nation (1848–1918)’, in Eric Cahm and Vladimir Fišera, (eds.), Socialism and Nationalism in Contemporary Europe (1848–1945), 2, pp. 115–32;

    Google Scholar 

  50. Rupnik, ‘Masaryk and Czech Socialism’, in T. G. Masaryk (1850–1937) 2, Thinker and Critic, ed. Robert B. Pynsent, (London, 1989), pp. 137–48.

    Google Scholar 

  51. For these events and Masaryk’s analysis, see Čas, XVIII, nos. 46 and 47, November 11 and 18, 1905; see also S. (T.G.M), ‘Na přechod k demokracii’, Naše doba, 14 (1906–7), pp. 1–2.

    Google Scholar 

  52. For Stalinist interpretations of the influence of the Russian revolution on Czech politics, see Jiří Doležal and Jan Beránek, Ohlas první Ruské revoluce v českých zemí (Prague, 1955)

    Google Scholar 

  53. and the collections of documents, ed. O. Kodedová, Rok 1905 (Prague, 1959)

    Google Scholar 

  54. and Léta 1906–1907 (Prague, 1962).

    Google Scholar 

  55. For general discussion of Czech political parties, see Otto Urban, Česká společnost, 1848–1918 (Prague, 1982), pp. 473–80, 531 passim;

    Google Scholar 

  56. Urban, České a slovenske dějiny do roku 1918 (Prague, 1991), pp. 211–22

    Google Scholar 

  57. The following is based on Masaryk, ‘Politické strany a nové formace’, Čas, nos. 83–4, 24–5 March 1908;

    Google Scholar 

  58. Masaryk, Potřeba pokrokové politiky (Mělník, 1908), pp. 14–16.

    Google Scholar 

  59. See Hašek, Politické a sociální dějiny strany mírného pokroku v mezích zákona, written in 1912, but first published in full in 1963.

    Google Scholar 

  60. See also Hašek, Z doby ‘Strany mírného pokroku v mezích zákona’ (Prague, 1956).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto, Canada

    H. Gordon Skilling (Professor Emeritus)

Authors
  1. H. Gordon Skilling
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 1994 H. Gordon Skilling

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Skilling, H.G. (1994). Leader of an Independent Party. In: T. G. Masaryk. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13392-5_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13392-5_4

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-13394-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-349-13392-5

  • eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation