Slovak Populist Party

(also known as the Hlinka Slovak Populist Party; Hlinkova Slovenská L’udová Strana), a bourgeois-clerical and later fascist party founded in December 1918. The party was headed first by A. Hlinka and after 1938 by J. Tiso. Initially, the party, which enjoyed considerable influence among the petit bourgeois strata in the towns and countryside, directed its efforts at defending the interests of the Catholic Church. From 1922 the principal elements of its ideology were nationalism, anti-Czech separatism, and clericalism.

In 1936 the party called on the government to nullify the Soviet-Czechoslovak Treaty of 1935, to conclude an agreement with the fascist countries, and to take decisive measures against the communist and antifascist movement in the country. In October 1938 it succeeded in compelling the Prague government to grant autonomy to Slovakia, which on Mar. 14, 1939, was proclaimed an “independent state” (with Tiso as president) under the “protection” of the German Reich. The party was dissolved by a decision of the Slovak National Council on Sept. 1, 1944.