| In the historical analyses of the development of Czechoslovak democracy during the First Republic (1918-1938), the significance of the Republican (Agrarian) party and its chairman, Antonin Svehla (1873-1933), has often been underestimated. After 1920, the Republicans had the strongest party in the National Assembly, and they were involved in every coalition government after 1918. Until his death, Svehla was the party chairman and led the Republicans in many cabinets, first as a minister and later as prime minister. In this study, archival material from Prague and Vienna along with published primary sources have been used to examine Svehla's career as a party politician and a statesman.;Svehla was instrumental in transforming his party from a narrow interest group for farmers to a mass political movement during the closing years of the Habsburg Monarchy. After 1918, he preserved the unity of the party, which drew its support from peasants and small farmers on the one hand and conservative agricultural industrialists on the other. Through a complicated power-sharing arrangement in the party hierarchy, Svehala provided positions for both his own moderate supporters as well as the conservatives. Likewise, Svehla accommodated the interests of the two groups in the formulation of policies such as the land reform and tariffs on agricultural products.;Using the strength of the Republican party and his skill at reconciling competing interests, Svehla constructed various ruling coalitions, uniting socialist, bourgeois, clerical, and minority parties. Svehla was widely known as the master of compromise, and he was the key figure in forming cabinets and drafting legislation designed to win the support of coalition members.;Partly because of the prominence of politicians such as Presidents Masaryk and Benes, and because of Svehla's own unobtrusiveness, the role of Svehla and the Republicans in the process of stabilizing Czechoslovakia's young and fragile democracy after 1918 has been neglected. This study attempts to determine the salient features of Svehla's political personality and his methods of negotiation. It also examines the Republican party's position as a center party in the coalitions which dominated Czechoslovakia's politics between the two world wars. |
