Croatian Republican Peasant Party (1945)
The prewar leader of the HSS Vladko Maček opted to wait for the war to end, while another faction joined the Ustaše movement that ruled the Axis puppet Independent State of Croatia (NDH).
In contrast, Hebrang attempted to entrench the dominance of the KPH in Croatia and to publicly establish and widen as much as possible a split between the Magovac-led faction and the pre-war HSS leadership by pressuring Magovac to denounce Maček as a collaborator.
After the war, the HSS executive committee was formally renamed the HRSS and joined the People's Front of Yugoslavia—a KPJ-dominated coalition established ahead of the 1945 Yugoslavian parliamentary election.
[1] After the death of Antun Radić in 1919,[2] and establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia), the party opposed the Yugoslav monarchy and further unification of the new state.
Vladko Maček, elected to replace Radić as the party leader,[4] negotiated the Cvetković–Maček Agreement on 26 August 1939, establishing an autonomous Banovina of Croatia.
[7] The German plans for the breakup of Yugoslavia also envisaged some form of autonomy for Croats to exploit Croatian dissatisfaction with the Yugoslav regime.
The declaration was made by Slavko Kvaternik on the urging of, and with support from, SS colonel Edmund Veesenmayer, attached to the Dienststelle Ribbentrop.
[9] Pavelić and the Italian-based Ustaše were only permitted to leave Italy and Italian-occupied territory in Yugoslavia after Mussolini extracted a written confirmation of the 1927 pledge,[12] allowing him to reach Zagreb in the early morning of 15 April with 195 supporters.
The decision to abandon organised armed resistance put the Yugoslav government-in-exile in a difficult position, further weakened by quarreling ministers who appeared united only in their opposition to Communism.
[15] With the Yugoslav defeat imminent, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) instructed its 8,000 members to stockpile weapons in anticipation of armed resistance,[16] which would spread by the end of the year to all areas of the country except Macedonia.
[17] Building on its experience in clandestine operations, the KPJ created the Yugoslav Partisans,[18] as resistance fighters led by Josip Broz Tito.
[19]The KPJ assessed that the German invasion of the Soviet Union had created favourable conditions for an uprising and its politburo founded the Supreme Headquarters of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia with Tito as commander in chief on 27 June 1941.
[23] Its leadership split into different factions over how to respond to the occupation of Yugoslavia, and the HSS's internal structure consisting of about 7,000 organisational units before the war was disbanded after the NDH banned the party in June 1941.
Another group, led by former Ban of Croatia Ivan Šubašić[25] and HSS general secretary Juraj Krnjević (appointed by Maček to represent him abroad), fled the country to join the royalist government-in-exile.
Magovac contacted the KPH organisations in the Podravina region, where he moved after the outbreak of the war, seeking to arrange the establishment of separate Partisan units for HSS members.
After the request was declined, he called upon HSS members to join the Partisan movement in as great numbers as possible to "deprive it of the communist tone".
Hebrang believed that greater involvement of the HSS members would lead to increased participation of Croats in the Partisan struggle.
Nikola Brozina, Tomo Čiković, Frane Frol, Aleksandar Koharević, Ivan Kuzmić, Filip Lakuš, and Magovac were among the members.
Hebrang deemed the positions held in the declaration unacceptable because it aimed to preserve the prewar HSS until the end of the war in ZAVNOH, transformed into a KPH–HSS coalition.
Nonetheless, the declaration avoided any mention of Maček and stated that the executive committee is now representing the HSS, now tied to the national liberation struggle.
[44] On 2 February 1944, a part of the HSS executive committee met in Čazma, where they adopted a resolution denouncing Maček as an Ustaše, Chetnik and Royal government-in-exile collaborator.
Slobodni dom resumed publication that day, printing its first issue since 25 December 1943,[45] since Hebrang deemed the newspaper a useful tool against Maček loyalists.
Hebrang saw the negotiations as a nuisance, but Tito and Kardelj insisted on a more tactical approach which would not jeopardise the unity of Croatia as leverage in KPJ's struggle to control Yugoslavia.
[53] After signing the Vis Agreement and establishing of the NFJ, Šubašić, the Prime Minister of the royal government-in-exile, asked the KPJ to allow him to re-establish the pre-war organisation of the HSS.
Slobodni dom reported an attendance of 100,000, but British diplomats estimated the crowd at 25–30,000 and stated that about 10,000 left while Gaži was speaking.
Establishment of district committees of the HRSS began, with interference from local KPH officials in some areas and with their help in other places.
Tito linked the collapse of the pre-war Yugoslavia with the multi-party system of government to justify the suppression of political opposition parties.
The Slobodni dom continued to be published, but the party slogan—Faith in God and Peasant Unity (Vjera u boga i seljačka sloga)—was dropped from its cover on 1 January 1948.
