The Democratic Peasant Party ( Roman: Partidul Țărănesc Democrat, PȚD ; German: Demokratische Bauernpartei ) is a provincial political party in Austro-Hungarian Bukovina also known as the Democratic Party , Peasant Party , National Democratic Party and Unirea Society . It was one of several political groups that claimed to express the interests of ethnic Romanians in the region. The party took a national-liberal and left-populist position, having support mainly among “peasants, village teachers and some intellectuals”. Its leaders were Aurel Onchul and Florea Lupu, who opposed the more conservative and elite Romanian National People's Party (PNPR). Rejecting “ political sectarianism ”, PŢD simultaneously united the positions of Austrian and Romanian nationalism - arguing that the aspirations of Romanians can only be realized within a multi-ethnic empire [1] . For this reason, the party was often accused of "double-dealing."
| Democratic Peasant Party | |
|---|---|
| room. Partidul Țărănesc Democrat | |
| Leader | Aurel Onchul |
| Established | 1902 |
| Headquarters | |
| Ideology | national liberalism |
In 1902-1905, PȚD pursued an alliance policy with representatives of other ethnic groups, including Ukrainian nationalists. This led to the creation of the “Progressive Peasant Brotherhood”, which dominated the Bukovina Sejm and in 1904 adopted the draft reform of the electoral system developed by Benno Strycher. Ethnic rivalries pushed the group back into sectarian politics before the parliamentary elections of 1907. PȚD adopted a policy of economic anti-Semitism and, together with PNPR, in 1908 merged into the Christian Social-Romanian Party. The party continued to lead an autonomous existence, and its elite controlled the State Bank of Bukovina and the Raiffeisen credit union. Such a practice almost brought the economy of Bukovina into collapse, personally opposing Onchul.
Informally, PȚD participated in the elections in July 1911, and then - already officially - in April 1914. At this stage, she adopted the tactics of “agrarianism” and anti-clericalism , and also reaffirmed her loyalty to Austria’s policy towards Romania . A few months later, with the outbreak of World War I and in connection with the advance of the Russian imperial army , the party became inactive - party activists provided only ineffective guerrilla resistance to the regular army. Onchul continued to represent PŢD in the Austrian Parliament in 1918 and was the only one among his Romanian colleagues who approved the Romanian-Ukrainian division of Bukovina. His collaboration with the Ukrainian Galitsin army ended in the loss of both personal popularity and the popularity of his party, but contributed to the unification of Bukovina with Great Romania .
Content
History
Ground
The Democratic Peasant Party existed in the last historical stages, when Bukovina belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The “extreme ethnic fragmentation” of the region in those years created both intense rivalry and political alliances between the main ethnic groups of Bukovina: rural communities of Romanians and Ukrainians (or “ Rusyns ”), German and Jewish minorities in cities, and so on. Aurel Onchul himself was separated from Romanian nationalism from an early age, although he maintained contacts with both conservative elements and “radical nationalist” ones. Often Onchul opposed other Romanians, taking the side of Austrian officials - who, in turn, were accused of doing “ Machiavellianism ", setting the leaders of different groups against each other.
The historian Theodor Belan believed that Onchul’s political career was directly related to the new Bukovina governor Konrad Hohenlohe , who wanted to calm the situation after a series of Romanian-Ukrainian political confrontations. To do this, he needed a "political program with economic requirements that would rule out the national question" and "replace political romanticism with realism ."
Onchul ended up in the Austrian House of Deputies during the 1901 elections, and the PŢD party itself was officially registered in early 1902 - but it took almost a year to become an organized group. In January 1903, PŢD published its Democratic Program, and on February 2 held its first congress under the name of the Political Society of Unira or the Democratic Peasant Party. Onchul, who was the president of the party, entered politics at a bad time.
In its propaganda, PŢD accused the " boyar " elite of exploiting the peasants and rural intelligentsia - thereby claiming to expose elite nationalism as a scheme; the party itself advocated a “ leftist populist / populist nationalism”. Onchul and his followers considered themselves emancipated progressives: "deeply loyal" to the ruling house of the Habsburgs . The historian Yoan Kokuz, one of Onchul’s most persistent critics, described him as “absolutely unscrupulous,” as well as “anti-people,” “loyal Austrian.” However, there was an opinion that Onchul believed that Austria united the small peoples of Eastern and Central Europe and that this protected them from absorption by the Russian Empire : his ideas were generally similar to Aurel Popovich ’s project “The United States of Greater Austria”.
Notes
- ↑ Bălan, 1929 , p. 9, 82, 96-98.
Literature
- Teodor Bălan. Bucovina în războiul mondial. - Cernăuți: Institutul de Arte Grafice și Editură Glasul Bucovinei, 1929.
- Roland Clark. Sfîntă tinerețe legionară. Activismul fascist în România interbelică. - Iași: Polirom, 2015 .-- ISBN 978-973-46-5357-7 .
- Ioan Cocuz. Partidele politice românești din Bucovina, 1862–1914. - Suceava: Cuvântul Nostru, 2003 .-- ISBN 973-85272-0-1 .