HISTORY OF THE PROVINCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK TRADERS’ PARTY IN SLOVAKIA IN THE YEARS 1920 – 1938

The Czechoslovak Traders’ Party formed an integral part of the party-political system of the first Czechoslovak Republic between 1918 and 1938. In the Czech environment, it followed on from older attempts, when several political parties gradually and separately emerged in Bohemia and Moravia from the 1890s, but they did not gain a foothold in political life due to their marginality. They faced a great amount of competition from a broad and differentiated system of non-political professional organizations, capable of satisfying most of the economic interests and needs of their membership base, and at the same time from a network of so-called satellite organizations, which offered traders the opportunity to rehabilitate their political ambitions; affiliated professional organizations were founded by all relevant political parties. Therefore, after the end of the Great War and the establishment of the independent Czechoslovak Republic, the political parties of traders and merchants merged into one organizational unit with the vision of creating a strong and influential political unit. The party unified and at the same time expanded its activities to the territory of Slovakia and gradually to Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Given that the aforementioned competitive environment in which it operated before the war remained essentially the same after 1918, the party remained an ambitious but relatively small political grouping without significant political influence even during the years of the First Republic. On the other hand, the Traders’ Party was part of all government coalitions from 1925 (with the exception of the period between 1932 and 1935) and its policies contributed to strengthening the democratic character of the government regime, so it cannot be completely trivialized. This study is devoted to the evocation of the activities of the Slovak provincial organization of this party. It was established and formed after the parliamentary elections in 1920. Slovak traders and merchants decided to resign from the joint action with the Slovak National and Peasant Party, merged with the Czechoslovak Traders’ Party and create a single organization with it. They adopted its agenda and organizational rules and elected their own provincial executive committee. The way the provincial party branch was established was thereby reflected in the fact that the Slovak party faction, unlike all (Czechoslovak) political parties operating on a nationwide scale, maintained relatively significant autonomy and independence from the headquarters in managing its structures, without, however, any fundamental or insurmountable differences between the party leadership and the provincial organization. The Prague party headquarters tolerated the different position of the provincial organization both towards the problem of Slovak autonomy and also Czechoslovakism, the solution of the national question in Czechoslovakia and to a certain extent also towards religious issues. In the partial party-political system of Slovakia, the provincial branch of the Czechoslovak Traders’ Party did not gain ground. The reasons are mainly found in the inability to face the competition of Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party, the Slovak National Party and the provincial faction of the National Democrats, which, thanks to their better financial standing, not only had a larger and more flexible apparatus developing more effective agitation and organizational activities, but the parties were able to offer mainly material benefits to traders. The lukewarm attitude towards the key issue of the country’s autonomy also plays a role. In addition, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that Slovak members of this social class were confronted with the interests of their economically relatively stronger Hungarian, Jewish, and even German colleagues.