Agrarian Party

of Czechoslovakia (Agrární strana; originally called Czech Agrarian Party; in 1922 officially became Republican Party of the Agricultural and Small-Peasant Population), one of the largest parties of bourgeois Czechoslovakia. It was founded in the late 19th century by a group of Czech bourgeois political figures. Until the formation of the Czechoslovakian Republic in 1918 the Agrarian Party supported the Hapsburg monarchy. In bourgeois Czechoslovakia, the Agrarian Party expressed the interests of large landowners and capitalist monopolies. It spread its influence among considerable masses of the peasantry through such organizations as Domovina, the Republican Union of Youth, and the Union of Livestock Breeders. During 1922–39 leaders of the Agrarian Party headed the governments of the bourgeois republic. Members of the Executive Committee of the Agrarian Party included V. Stoupal, L. Feierabend, R. Beran, and F. Malypetr. Its central organ was the newspaper Venkov.

From the formation of the Czech bourgeois republic, the Agrarian Party’s foreign policy maintained an Anglo-French orientation, but after Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, it endorsed a rapprochement with fascist Germany. In November 1938 the party dissolved. Its leaders then headed the profascist Party of National Unity, formed in 1938.