Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States

Bohumír Šmeral: The national question and the social democrats

BOHUMÍR ŠMERAL: THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS Title: Národnostní otázka a sociální demokracie (The national question and the social democrats) Originally published: in Protokol IX. sjezdu Českoslovanské sociální demokratick é strany dělnické (Prague: Zář, 1909) pp. 116–151. Language: Czech The excerpts used are from Bohumír Šmeral, Výbor z díla, vol. I (1902–1921), ed. by Jan Galandauer (Prague: Svoboda, 1981), pp. 132–152. About the author Bohumír Šmeral [1880, Třebíč (Ger. Trebitsch, Bohemian-Moravian Uplands) – 1941, Moscow]: politician and journalist. In 1896 while still in secondary school in Třebíč, Šmeral joined Pokrok (Progress), a social democratic workers’ association. Later, while studying law at Prague, he was active in the Czecho-Slav Social Democratic Workers’ Party. In 1899–1918, he was an editor of the party newspaper, Právo lidu (People’s right). In the meantime he translated Friedrich Engels, Karl Kautsky, and other socialist theorists into Czech and became one of the most important theoreticians in the party. At its ninth congress, in 1909, he was elected to the executive committee, becoming the main representative of the Marxist Internationalist branch of the party and the chief theorist of the ‘national question,’ in which he was inspired by the Austro-Marxists Karl Renner and Otto Bauer. In 1911, Šmeral was elected a deputy to the Reichsrat, where he became the spiritus agens of the parliamentary club of the Czecho-Slav social democrats. At the beginning of First World War, he played a leading role in loyalist pro-Austrian politics and was among the initiators of the establishment of the ‘Czech Union’ in the Diet uniting the Czech political representatives in the name of national interests. Nevertheless, the growing nationalist emotions both within as well as outside the party forced him to resign from all party functions in September 1917. In May 1921, Šmeral helped to found the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, becoming its first chairman until 1924, and managed to attract mass support from among Czech workers. With the beginning of the ‘Bolshevization ’ of the party, however, he was ostracized. In 1926, he was removed from the executive board of the Communist International and was totally marginalized in the Party at home. In the service of the Comintern, he was sent to China and Mongolia and later worked in various places. He was allowed to return to Czechoslovakia only after the 1935 turn towards the Popular Front tactics in the Communist movement. After his death, he left behind a highly contested and unsuccessfully suppressed leg- BOHUMÍR ŠMERAL: THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS 413 acy of the non-Bolshevik origins of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Today, contested as he is, Šmeral is seen as one of the most original Czech theorists of radical socialism. Main works: Kdo jsou a co chtějí sociální demokrati? [Who are the social democrats and what are their aims?] (1906); Materiálie k dějinám dělnického hnutí v Rakousku, zvláště se zřetelem na dělnické hnutí české [Materials concerning the history of the workers’ movement in Austria, especially with regard to the Czech workers’ movement] (1906); Národnostní otázka v sociální demokracii až do sjezdu hajnfeldského [The national question in social democracy until the Heinfeld congress ] (1909); Pravda o sovětském Rusku [The truth about Soviet Russia] (1920), Boj za osvobození Číny [The fight for the liberation of China] (1927). Context The Czecho-Slav Social Democratic Workers’ Party was founded in 1878 at a congress in Břevnov (now part of Prague) as a section within the Austrian social democracy. In the 1890s, the party already had a considerable following, particularly among the industrial working class. In 1893, it adopted an autonomous status while still belonging to the Austrian Social Democratic Party in Cisleithania. In the elections of 1907, the first with universal suffrage, the Czech Social Democratic Party emerged as the strongest Czech political party, with 39.8 percent of the general vote in Bohemia and 30.7 percent in Moravia. In its first declaration in the Reichsrat, it distanced itself from Czech nationalism and the politics of state rights, and denounced the efforts to divide the Empire into national states, while stressing that it was only socialism that could bring both social and national justice. In their first Břevnov political program, Czech social democrats declared as their task organizing Czech-speaking workers not only in the Bohemian...