Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Seán Hanley
s.hanley@ssees.ucl.ac.uk
1
The Czech Republicans 1990-1998: Rise and Fall of Populist Radical
Introduction
was a radical right populist party in the Czech Republic led by Miroslav Sládek,
which was politically successful for much of the 1990s. It was represented in the
Czech parliament between 1992 and 1998, but its support subsequently declined and,
having lost parliamentary representation, the party rapidly fragmented. Since this time
radical right forces in the Czech Republic have consistently failed to unite and,
despite high profile and provocative bursts of political activism, have remained
electorally and political marginal. In this paper, I examine the rise and fall of the SPR-
evaluate its impact on the development Czech democracy using the framework
developed by Kaltwasser and Mudde1. As a subsidiary goal I also consider the extent
process of democratization, given the puzzling weakness of the Czech radical right
over the past decade even during periods of economic contraction, growing public
concern with corruption and intense public dissatisfaction with established parties and
politicians.
Sládek and a group of associates and formally registered as a party in February 1990.
1
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser and Cas Mudde (2010) ‘Populism Corrective or Threat to
Democracy?’. Unpublished framework paper.
2
The party seems to have originated as one of a plethora small, anti-communist groups
founded in late 1989 which styled themselves ‘right-wing’ and often also attaching
French Gaullists and to the interwar Czechoslovak Agrarians - the closest Czech
information management and librarianship2 then aged 40, who worked as an official
for the Czech Office for Press and Information3 during 1980s, appears to have led an
unremarkable life until the fall of communism. Neither he nor other founders of the
SPR-RSČ seem to have been Communist Party members, or to have had even the
most peripheral contacts with dissent intelligentsia or the ‘grey zone’ networks of
is available suggests that in addition to Sládek and other would-be politicians, the
group also contained some figures with connections to the Agrarian party and/or
What marked out the SPR-RSČ more was Sládek’s egocentric and dominant
personality and inclination to make radical outspoken statements, which led to a rapid
2
He was widely referred to by both supporters and opponents as ‘Dr Sládek’ because he held the
common academic title PhDr. indicating that he had completed a short period of additional study
following the standard five year Mgr degree. The qualification is now much criticised as ill-defined and
confusing following the introduction of West European Western-style doctoral study.
3
As the Office principally exercised censorship function, opponents accused Sládek of having been a
censor. However, no clear evidence of this has emerged. Sládek worked at the Office in 1981-6. There
seems to be no reliable information as to his occupation in late 1980s.
4
The most well known such figure in the early SPR-RSČ was the former Agrarian and Charter 77
signatory Josef Šárka who stood for the party in 1990 and was briefly its honorary chairman. See
http://cs.metapedia.org/wiki/Josef_%C5%A0%C3%A1rka (accessed 1 July 2010) and Miroslav Mareš,
Pravicový extremismus a radikalismus v ČR. Barrister and Principal“ Brno, 2003, pp. 188-191.
3
breakdown in attempts to co-operate with similar small groupings leading the Sládek
group to register as an independent party and contest the 1990 Czech and
groupings, the Conservative Party - Free Bloc – (KS - SB).5 Although it fielded
candidates in both the Czech lands and Slovakia before the break-up of the
communist party critical of President Havel and Civic Forum for not becoming ‘a
hostility to African and Vietnamese guest workers - are detectable even in early
programmatic documents and, much more so, in Sládek’s own statements and
being channelled through organizations in the political mainstream allied with Civic
Forum such as the Club of Engaged Non-Partisans (KAN) and the Confederation of
Political Prisoners (KPV) and through emerging local splits in the Forum itself. In the
June 1990 Czech and Czechoslovak parliamentary elections both the Free Bloc and
5
The party’s convoluted double-barrelled name seems to have been adopted because simpler names
using the Republican Party label had already been registered by other groups. Sdružení pro republiku
(‘Association for the Republic) is the standard Czech translation of the French Rassemblement pour la
République, the name of the main Gaullist party in France in 1976-2002.
6
Its highest vote in Slovakia was 0.34 per cent (in the ballot to the upper chamber of the Federal
Assembly in 1992).
7
See‘Hlavní referát přednesený předsedou strany PhDr Miroslavem Sládkem’, Spektrum, n.d.,
unnumbered [SPR-RSČ bulletin May 1990, Unijazz Doucumentation Centre, Prague], pp. 1-2. Also
contained in ‘Sdružení pro republiku - REPUBLIKANSKÁ STRANA Československa - Materialy z
ustavujícího sjezdu, n.d., Civic Forum Archive, Box 4 (Politická komise - interní informační
materiály), sl. 5 (consulted in 1998).
4
the SPR-RSČ’s joint electoral list with the tiny All People’s Democratic Party
(VLDS) received negligible support, each gaining just over one per cent in elections
communism with a pallet of populist anti-elite, chauvinistic and racist themes similar
to those of the radical right in Western Europe. Using its newly founded weekly
communist (dissident) elites. The party latched rapidly onto the work of conspiracy
theorist Miroslav Dolejší, a former political prisoner and KPV member, whose claims
were first reported in September 1990 the Expres - one of new breed of short-lived
sensational tabloids, whose style Republika quickly learned to mimic. Dolejší’s book
An Analysis of the Events of 17 November 1989 claims more that dissidents in Charter
77 were, in fact, a secret reserve of 800 loyal Communist Party members created in
1969-70 whom the regime only pretended to persecute and that the Velvet Revolution
was the product of a secret agreement between Reagan and Gorbachev in 1987 and
was prepared jointly by the KGB and the CIA since June 1988. 9
Prague in November 1990. Banners in English held by party activists, visible in media
8
The two blocs received similar, but somewhat lower support in elections to the two houses of the
Federal Assembly
9
See interview with Dolejší, ‘Fantastičtější než Orwell?’, Lidová demokracie, 15 March 1991. The
inconclusive conclusions of a parliamentary enquiry into events of 17 November 1989 – and
specifically the extent to which they had orchestrated by Czech or Soviet security services - widely
presented bestselling book by the (then) student activist Václav Bartuška - gave such outlandish
theories an air of verisimilitude. Václav Bartuška, Polojasno : pátrání po vinících 17. listopadu 1989.
Praha : Exlibris , 1990.
5
coverage of the event, read ‘President Bush - You Are Talking To Communists’.
draw rapid support popular. It called for larger social benefits and increased public
services, greater law and order, less bureaucracy and state intervention, the re-
the defence of Czech national interests against the West (and, in particular, supposed
German and Sudeten German revanchism) and the Roma minority - the racism for
which the party became best known. Analysis of the content of Republika suggests
that the overt and aggressive racist campaigning against the Roma minority dates
from February-March 1991, and anti-German themes from early 1992. Some analysts
suggest the party toned down anti-Romany and anti-foreign rhetoric before the 1992
crime. 12
From spring 1991, the party’s mix of extreme and outrageous rhetoric - Sládek’s
call, for example, for a ‘march on Prague’ so that government leaders could be
‘thrown into the [river] Vltava’) - its provocative and well publicised demonstrations
10
.See ‘Národní třída po roce’, Republika, no. 10, 26 November 1990. See ‘Zazněl nám zvon
svodody?’, Svobodné slovo, 19 November 1990, pp. 1 and 4.
11
Also-known as Sub Carpathian Ukraine or Ruthenia.
12
See J Pehe, ‘The Emergence of Right-wing extremism’, Report on Eastern Europe, 28 June 1991,
pp.1-6 J Pehe, ‘RFL/RL Research Institute Program Draft F565: The Republicans and the Left Bloc:
Profiles of Two Czech Political Parties’, 24 August 1994. Unpublished material in Radio Free Europe
cuttings library, Prague (consulted 1997)) Now the Open Media Research Institute (OMRI), Budapest).
6
13
marches on the headquarters of Czechoslovak Television in 1991 and 1992 and its
continual public campaigning – including a punishing schedule of rallies and open air
mobilised enough support to create a small national organisation (see table 1) and
growing electoral support. The party also received (supportive) publicity from newly
(Nov)
(July)
est. 2000
Sources: M Matoušková, ‘Řady KSČM údajně nejpočetnější’, Lidové noviny, 24 November 1995; D
Tácha, ‘Živili jsme Sládka’, Týden, 37/98, pp. 37-9. Estimates for branches in 1990 and 1991 are based
on analysis of Republika in the period November 1990 - July 1991.
* Estimates for 995 are based on the fact that in the November 1994 local elections 2225 candidates on
SPR-RSČ lists were listed as members of the party and that SPR-RSČ lists were presented in 496
communes. Volby do zastupitelstev v obcích 18.-19. listopadu 1994 (díl 1), Prague: Český statistický
úřad, 1994, table no. 66. Also online at www.volby.cz
In June 1992 benefiting from the fluid and uncertain political environment created by
the break-up of Civic Forum into separate parties, the launching of economic reforms
13
. A selection of such articles from 1991-2 reporting the SPR-RSČ and its leader favourably are
included as appendices to M Sládek, ...tak to vidím já, Brno: SPR-RSČ and, 1992.
7
and the Czech-Slovak tensions over redesign of the federal state, SPR-RSČ made an
electoral breakthrough, polling just over 6 per cent of the Czech vote in the federal
parliaments.
SPR-RSČ’s 14 federal deputies rapidly broke with the party – the party was
between the Czech and German governments to return the Sudetenland to Germany.
Republican representative also repeatedly came into conflict with the police and the
courts, usually in connection with laws on inciting racial hatred and public order
offences : Sládek, for example, was prosecuted for his remarks in 1997 that the only
things Czechs should regret about their relationship with the Germans is that they did
not manage to kill more of them during the Second World War.14
The greater access to the media it enjoyed as a parliamentary party and the platform
afforded by parliament itself also enable the SPR-RSČ to amplify its message. In the
1996 Czech parliamentary elections, the party gained over 8 per cent of the vote,
14
Miroslav Mareš, Pravicový extremismus a radikalismus v ČR. Op.cit., pp. 196-7.
8
contributing to a deadlocked political situation in which neither parties of the
mainstream left or mainstream right could form a majority coalition. Although willing
to share a television studio with SPR-RSČ representatives, from the outset all other
parties (including the hard line Communists – themselves the subject of a cordon
sanitaire) treated the SPR-RSČ as an extremist pariah party lacking any real political
or intellectual credibility.
Source: www.volby.cz
*Elections in 1990 and 1992 were for Czech National Council, subsequent elections to Chamber of
Deputies
** Miroslav Sládek Republicans (RMS)
*** Re-founded SPR-RSČ. Electoral lists in 3 of 14 districts
As several authors note, 15 considerable care must be taken in transposing models and
(and elsewhere). CEE states had, for example, quite different – and in the years
15
Vladimíra Dvořáková.’The Politics of anti-politics? The Radical Right in the Czech Republic: Past
and Present in Lene Bøgh Sørensen and Leslie Eliason (eds.), Fascism, Liberalism and Social
Democracy in Central Europe, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press pp. 166-79; Herbert .P. Kitschelt
‘Growth and Persistence of the Radical Right in Postindustrial Democracies. Advances and Challenges
in Comparative’ West European Politics, vol. 30 (5), 2007, pp. 1176-1207; Miroslav Mareš, Pravicový
extremismus a radikalismus v ČR, op.cit
9
post-industrial societies of Western Europe, as well as markedly different patterns of
migration). Even ideologically based typologies of party, which are less dependent on
social and historical contexts than classic cleavage-based models, are therefore to
radical right parties as a political reaction against the economic and cultural impacts
can be made for both Western Europe and the newer CEE democracies.
Notwithstanding such caveats the Republicans fit comfortably with the conception of
Although the party showed little interest in policy - its ‘programmes’ being short one-
16
See Giovanni Sartori,. ‘Concept Mis formation in Comparative Politics’ American Political Science
Review 64 (4), 1970 1033-1053.
17
Vladimíra Dvořáková.’The Politics of anti-politics’, op.cit.; Michael Minkenberg, ‘The Radical
Right in Post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe: Comparative Observations and Interpretations’,
East European Politics and Society, 16 (2) pp.335-362.
18
Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right parties in Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2007
19
P Machonin et al., Strategie sociální transformace české společnosti, Brno: Doplněk, 1996, pp. 31-
43.
10
NATO and the EU. Its authoritarianism was expressed in demands for law and order
tougher punishments for offenders including the restoration of the death penalty (a
signature demand). In almost all cases, however, crime and disorder was ethnicized as
part of the ‘Gypsy problem’ or put into a populist idiom (see below) and discussed in
Unlike neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groupuscules which emerged in the Czech lands
elements of direct democracy. However, the party’s was acutely sceptical of post-
tended democracy – both in the Czech Republic and generally – simply as a means for
even claimed, for example, that ‘[i]t would be easy and understandable and fully in
accordance with the Bill of Rights and Freedoms [in the Czech Constitution] to bring
21
about the removal of illegitimate authorities using any means, including violence’
Such statements, along with the racist content of Republika, led some to wonder
whether there were offer for banning the party as an anti-democratic grouping under
22
the Law on Political Parties. However, there is no evidence that the party’s
leadership was directly linked with racist violence - as was the case with smaller more
20
M Sládek, To, co mám na mysli, je svoboda, op.cit., 1995, p. 104; see also M Sládek ....tak to vidím
já, op.cit., p. 66.
21
. To, co mám na mysli, je svoboda, op.cit., p. 72. Such statements, along with the racist content of
Republika, could some observers concluded offer grounds for banning the party as an anti-democratic
grouping under the Law on Political Parties. See J Fabrý, ‘Lze rozpustit republikány?’, Nová
Přítomnost, 5/97, pp. 26-7.
22
See J Fabrý, ‘Lze rozpustit republikány?’, Nová Přítomnost, 5/97, pp. 26-7.
11
radical far-right groups with an overt neo-fascist or neo-Nazi orientation – and, as
with the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, the Czech authorities shied away
from deploying directly legislation allowing the banning of parties advocating racism
did, however, enjoy periods of (qualified) support in Czech skinhead and neo-Nazi
sub-cultures and anti-semitic authors sometimes wrote for Republika, although the
state and its founders Masaryk and Beneš made such relationships uncomfortable. 23
understanding of itself. By the mid-1990s, however, the Republicans had also come to
see themselves as part of a Europe wide family of ‘radical right’ parties which, they
believed, were a response to the wider ‘moral crisis of the democratic system’
Republicans’ task like those of other radical right parties was thus to ‘do battle with
bringing about the ‘genuine’ revolutionary regime change that Civic Forum had
pretended to carry out. The influence of the West European radical right on SPR-RSČ
was, however, superficial and sporadic. The party’s logo of three intersecting
diamonds with letters REP seems to have been modelled from that of the German,
23
Some leading members of the Republicans of Miroslav Sládek (RMS) formed in 2001 after the
collapse and formal winding up of the first SPR-RSČ were later active in the neo-fascist Workers Party
(DS) formed in 2003, notably Tomáš Vandas the former RMS secretary who was the leader of the DS.
The DS was banned by the Czech courts in 2010 for extremism and its encouragement of rascist
violence (see below).
24
M Sládek, ‘Skutečná pravice aneb proč lidé budou volit právě naši stranu’, Republika, no. 4, 1995,
reprinted in To, co mám na mysli, je svoboda, op.cit., pp. 73-4
25
A Kukelová, ‘K volbám’, op.cit.,
26
M Sládek, ‘Skutečná pravice aneb proč lidé budou volit právě naši stranu’, op.cit., p. 4.
12
although contact between the two parties was made on only on one occasion in 1991
and demands for financial support. The party enjoyed better relations with France’s
Front National and participated in several events organised as part of the first
attended FN congresses in 1997 and 2000 and FN representatives were among foreign
Nazi groupings in the semi-lagel Czech the skinhead -culture and neo-fascist or neo-
Nazi sub-culture (primarily). The SPR-RSČ displayed the three key core indicators of
1) the division of society into two homogenous and hostile groups, a corrupt
RSČ’s primarily national) unity and in serving and defending this common
minorities).
27
Miroslav Mareš, Pravicový extremismus a radikalismus v ČR. Op.cit. 206-7.
28
Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right parties in Europe. Op. cit.
13
These themes – which the RSČ expressed in practical terms through its strong
more detail below, which also with supplementary important supplementary populist
characteristics found in the case of the SPR- RSČ’s: charismatic leadership and loose
privileged elite groups, both dissident and communist, who, given the (supposed)
communist background of many dissidents in the 1950s and 1960s, could be seen as
one in the same. Early in 1990, for example, Sládek spoke of the party defending
...ordinary people, who are the salt of the earth, they work, they look after
families, they were here through the most difficult of times and had to rely
only on their miserable wages. They didn’t emigrate; neither did anyone
future (...) And not merely to watch passively as power is taken over by
Such people had increasingly come realise that other parties and the political system
29
‘Hlavní referát přednesený předsedou strany PhDr Miroslavem Sládkem’, op.cit.
30
Zlikvidovat konkurenci?’, op.cit.
14
means of exercising social control for self-seeking reasons.31 As Sládek explained, the
financial resources and unlimited access to the media ... now fully in the
different political currents, not for programmatic reasons, but for reasons
that this or that current will enable them to continue their sweet inactivity
Not only the Velvet Revolution, but all subsequent developments were explained
have the impression that everything was planned beforehand (similarly to the Velvet
Revolution) and that the Czech and Slovak nations have been deceived, abused and
While noting the outward emergence of ostensibly programmatic parties of left, right
and centre in Czech politics, the Republicans tend to regard such distinction as
31
See ‘Hlavní referát přednesený předsedou strany PhDr Miroslavem Sládkem’, op.cit., pp, 1-2.
32
M Sládek, ....tak to vidím já, op.cit., p. 89.
33
‘Vždy o nás rozhodl někdo jiný’, Republika, 16-22 November 1992, p. 7.
15
phoney or falsified and lacked a concept of party or partisan competition in any way
distinct from the idea of regime change. Despite insisting that they were ‘the only
genuinely right-wing party in our country’,34 the Republicans rejected that there was a
inapplicable on the grounds that parties purportedly representing them were either
irrelevant or mere vehicles for corrupt (communist) elites.35 Sládek thus claimed that
elites had ‘created pretend new parties and thus in fact created a fictitious political
radical right - parties like itself were characterised by a combination of nationalist and
(a form of evil) rather than a social or historical one. This view sometimes shaded
into a more deeply anti-political view: politics was, as Sládek once put it, a dark
tunnel in which the only light by which people could orient themselves as they like
fumbled their way along was the Republican Party and its goals.38
34
‘Skutečná pravice aneb proč lidé budou volit právě naši stranu’, Republika, no. 4 1995, reprinted in
M Sládek, To, co mám na mysli, je svoboda, Place of publication not stated: SPR-RSČ, 1995, pp. 73-4.
35
M Sládek, Jak to vidím já, Place of publication not stated: SPR-RSČ, 1992, p.90.
36
M Sládek ....tak to vidím já, op.cit., p. 71.
37
The Austrian Freedom Party (FPO) and the Front national in France were also cited as ‘genuinely
right-wing’. ibid.
38
M Sládek, ....tak to vidím já, op.cit., p. 90.
16
The SPR-RSČ highly personalised and moralistic view of politics thus explained the
corruption and turpitude By contrast, unlike both dissident and communist elites
(who, the Republicans argued, were interlinked and co-responsible for the inequities
of both past and present),39 the Republicans stressed that they were morally unsullied
‘new faces’ with a ‘clean record’ and, unsurprisingly, the party’s discourses about the
type of political change it wished to bring about replete with references to moral
renewal, purging and purification. The party’s internal culture of continual activist
mobilization (described in more detail below) intended to build a distinct moral ethos
39
See ‘Hlavní referát přednesený předsedou strany PhDr Miroslavem Sládkem’, op.cit., pp. 1-2.
40
M Sládek, ....tak to vidím já, op.cit., p. 90. Reprinted from Republika, 3 February1991.
17
In contrast with the ‘decency’ and popular base of the Republicans, Civic Forum
successor parties were vehicles for corruption, personal enrichment and elite
which required ‘purging’41 because although they had money and power, but no roots
liberal democratic and liberal market institutions were not simply phoney and
inauthentic – a view shared in less some form by many across the political spectrum –
but the product of deliberate deceit by ruling elites, further evidencing their moral
turpitude.
This was in the Republican view true not simply of pretended differences between
communists and dissidents or political parties of left and right, but even of seemingly
more impersonal economic processes. Sládek thus argued that growing social
elites to depoliticise and control discontent through poverty, rather than an indirect
figure 1.
41
R Havlík, ‘ODS = komunistická nebo fašistická strana’, Republika, no. 3, 20 - 26 January 1992, p. 3;
J Bulba, ‘Proved’te očistu svých politických stran’, Republika, no. 37, 14 - 20 September 1992, p. 5.
42
M Sládek, To, co mám na mysli, je svoboda, op.cit., p. 104.
18
SPR-RSČ as a transitional ‘movement-party’
The first such distinct feature is the Republicans’ embrace of the concept of the
1990s which seems consciously or otherwise to have tried to emulate the model of the
Civic Forum movement. As practiced in the Czech lands, 43 this style of organization
important as ideology and formal rules for a well functioning party capable of
the largest party in the historic Moravian provinces of the Czech Republic in 1990 and
the centrist Civic Movement (OH) formed in 1991 by Václav Klaus’s former
opponents in Civic Forum when the movement split. However, it was also an
The Republicans saw their party as a dynamic campaigning vehicle, whose main task
43
For a comparative and theoretical discussion see Herbert .P. Kitschelt ‘Movement Parties’, in
Richard S. Katz and William Crotty (eds.) Handbook of Party Politics, Sage Publishers, 2006, pp. 278-
90,
19
meetings/rallies, visits to hospitals and factories and charity events. In this way, it was
envisaged, the party would make contact with ever greater numbers of voters.
Members also spent considerable time on flyposting and leaflet distribution, making
Republican posters – usually of Sládek - a common site across in the Czech Republic
in quite small localities.44 Such activity was central to the party’s strategy and self-
image. In 1995, for example, Sládek told the party congress that ‘[t]he basis of our
success is still personal encounters with the public’, and noted with satisfaction that
three million pieces of propaganda and 300, 000 posters had been posted or
distributed by members in the preceding year45. It was a ‘top priority task to intensify
this activity in the coming period and involve as many members and supporters as
attempts to deny SPR-RSČ access to the media. However, it was cited as a sign of the
party’s vital, dynamic popular character, which supposedly distinguished it from the
‘The strength of the party is shown by the fact that we are capable of and
willing to organise this activity with our own forces and we do not have to
pay various advertising agencies large sums for distribution (roznos), like
all the other parties do, but can devote these to printing more material and
In Sládek’s view the role of a ‘real’ political party was thus basically one of
44
See memoir by former SPR-RSČ headquarters worker. Andrea Cerqueirová. A Cerqueirová,
Republikáni: Šokující odhalení, Place of publication not stated: Unholy Cathedral, 1999, pp. 16-17.
45
M Sládek ‘Zhodnocení činnosti strany’ To, co mám na mysli, je svoboda, Brno: SPR-RSÈ, 1995, p.
233.
46
ibid., p. 234.
47
M Sládek, ‘Zhodnocení činnosti strany’ in To, co mám na mysli, je svoboda, op.cit., p. 234.
20
For a political party the election campaign starts the same day that the
Without such campaigning, Sládek feared, organisations could lose their original élan
the sense of identity and status derived from politics. Mobilisation and the calling of
Continual mobilisation would enable ‘organism of the party to continually grow. (...)
similar situation can occur with the organism of a political party.’49 The conception
was reflected in the absence of any intermediary or regional structures in the party,
which was deliberately organised on the basis of local branches and a national
headquarters.50
Charismatic leadership
Internal critics have also noted a fan-club like adulation of Sládek. One noted that the
programmatic far right populism. The strategy was explicitly justified in Republika.
distraction from the party’s real political message, others argued that Sládek attracted
48
ibid., p. 236.
49
M Sládek, ....tak to vidím já, op.cit., p. 90. Reprinted from Republika, 3 February 1991.
50
See ‘Hlavní referát přednesený předsedou strany PhDr Miroslavem Sládkem’, op.cit.
51
Josef Donát, ex-Chairman of the SPR-RSČ organisation in Liberec. ‘SPR- RSČ funguje jako
fotbalový klub’, Lidové noviny, 17 June 1998, p.4.
21
public and media interest on the party’s beliefs, thus breaking the ‘media blockade’
on the party. The Chairman’s charisma was, they argued, itself an important source of
attraction to the alienated in society, ‘young people, who will determinedly follow
‘‘their Sládek’’ because they are nauseated by all this so-called velvet’.52 Charismatic
The Republicans were able mobilise members and (see polling data in table 2) support
over a period of years. Their failure to re-enter parliament in the early elections of
June 1998 despite having performed strongly two years earlier and mounted a costly
disappearance from the Czech political scene seems all the more puzzling given that
the late 1990s were a period of economic stagnation, marked by heightened awareness
of corruption and high levels of public discontent with established parties: the 1998
elections were called early after a party financing scandal had led to the collapse of
In reality, however, the party was always electorally and organizationally vulnerable.
Its vulnerabilities became more marked as Czech party competition became more
structured and Czech parties shifted towards more professionalized party organization
and campaigned. The party’s more usual electorate consisted of younger, less
educated male voters with higher levels of support also found among the unemployed,
inhabitants of regions with multiple social problems such as North Bohemia and
members of the police and army.54 Analysis suggested, however, that Republican
52
A Kukelová, ‘K volbám’, Republika, no. 26, 26 June - 9 July 1992, p.3.
53
‘Zlikvidovat konkurenci?’, Republika, no. 11, 16 - 22 March 1992; A Kukelová , ‘K volbám’, op.cit.,
p.3.
54
Miroslav Mareš, Pravicový extremismus a radikalismus v ČR. Op.cit., pp. 218-221.
22
frustration with the course of political and social transformation and alienation from
the, rather than specific economic grievances. Exit polling also suggested that the
the party’s ability to cross the parliamentary threshold was its ability to attract
disproportionate support from first time voters and those who not previously
abstained, who tended opt for the party at the last minute. In June 1998, perhaps in
part because of the short interval between elections, the party failed to attract these
groups in sufficient numbers. At the same time the party suffered a heavy net loss of
voters to the Social Democrats who had emerged for the first time as a strong and
credible challenger to the centre-right in 1996 and whose vote increased markedly in
1998 (from 26 per cent to 32 per cent). This, analysts suggest, reflected both the
increasingly material concerns of some former Republican voters and the greater
functional formal party structures. In terms of structure, the Republicans more or less
Both from formal constitution of the party which gave its chairman substantial powers
procedures to maintain Sládek’s control of the party and exclude critical factions and
55
Martin Kreidl and Klara Vlachová ‘Rise and Decline of Right-Wing Extremism in the Czech
Republic in the 1990s’, Czech Sociological Review, 8 (1), 2000, pp. 69-91.
23
However, informally Sládek exercised absolute power in SPR-RSČ and ran it through
members of the party executive, all aspects of party policy, organisation and finance.
It was an unwritten rule that only Sládek and Party Secretary Jan Vik could speak on
behalf of the party to the media or in parliament.56 Internal critics described him as
56
See D Šrámek, ‘Konec doktora Sládka?’, Fórum, no. 23/1990 p. 4; ‘Republikánka trvdí, že Sládek
podvedl voliče’, Mladá fronta Dnes, 5 August 1996, p.2; Živili jsme Sládka’, Týden, 37/98, pp. 37-
39; ‘My Name is Petr, and I am a Recovering Republican’, The New Presence, September 1998, p. 28.
See also Cerqueirová, op.cit., pp.59-78.
57
Alena Mucková. Former Chairwoman of the SPR-RSČ in České Budějovice. ‘Národní blok bojuje
proti Sládkovi’ , Lidové noviny, 17 October 1996, p. 2
24
... simply farcical. Only people, whom the presidium could count on to
support the policies of the leadership and Miroslav Sládek could attend.
Membership records, for example, were so inflated and inaccurate – the party
routinely claimed a membership of 50, 000, while more realistic estimates would
the signatures of two thirds of the party’s notional membership necessary to call an
itself and style of campaigning, Sládek’s personal dominance of the party, reliance on
informal methods to control and manage it, led to repeated factional conflicts
prompting several of activists to leave the party in several waves.60 Such defections
Sládek‘s nepotistic placement of his partner (later his second wife) and relatives on
the party’s electoral list in 1996 and his apparent misuse of party funds to finance his
own lifestyle.61 The latter accusation seems to have been especially electorally
58
Pavel Kadáš, Chairman of the SPR-RSČ organisation in Liberec.‘Vedení republikanů zahájilo
čistku’, Mladá fronta Dnes, 29 July 1998.
59
Josef Neřima former Chairman of the Republican local organisation in Chodov claimed that, when
approached, only 1 per cent of those on local membership lists confirmed they were party members. D
Tácha, ‘Živili jsme Sládka’, Týden, 37/98, pp. 37-39.
60
After the initial department of moderate alienated by Sládek’s radicalism in early 1990, the Radical
Republican Party (RRS) broke away after the 1990 elections and joined with other ex-SPR-RSČ
members (including two Republican deputies) who had left Sládek’s party in 1992 and 1995 to form
the Party of Republican and National Democratic Unity (SRNDJ), later re-named the Patriotic
Republican Party (VRS). VRS was joined by a further large group from SPR-RSČ in 1998 after
Sládek’s party lost its parliamentary representation. The VRS subsequently experienced an influx of
members from small neo-fascist groups such as the National Alliance and National Resistance, who
tried to re-name the party the National Social Bloc (NSB) and later Right Alternative (PA). See
Miroslav Mareš, Pravicový extremismus a radikalismus v ČR. pp. 190-99, 225-238.
61
Živili jsme Sládka’, Týden, 37/98, pp. 37-9 and report in Carolina No 284, Friday, April 10,
1998.Online at http://carolina.cuni.cz/archive-en/Carolina-E-No-284.txt (accessed 1 June 2010).
25
damaging given the party’s regular attacks on the political class as personally corrupt
and self-seeking.
In the two years following its party’s exit from parliament, despite the success as a
publicity stunt of Sládek’s invitation to Jean Marie Le Pen to visit the Czech Republic
in 1999, the SPR-RSČ rapidly declined and disintegrated, a process accelerated by the
failure of its candidates to make any impact in the first elections to new regional
authorities in 2000.62 When the party was declared bankrupt in 2001 because of its
organisation, the Miroslav Sládek Republicans (RMS) which attracted a new younger
group leading activists following the departure of the remainder of Sládek’s leading
associates from the old SPR-RSČ. RMS unsuccessfully contested the 2002
parliamentary elections and 2004 European election, polling 0.9 per cent and 0.6 per
cent respectively. In 2008 RMS merged with a small number Republican groups
linked with Sládek to form a new, identically named SPR-RSČ. In 2010 election the
‘new’ party fielded candidates in three of the Czech Republic’s fourteen electoral
districts polling 0.03 per cent of the national vote. However, despite a brief personal
comeback in local politics in 2003-4 when he became mayor of the small borough of
Útěchov on the outskirts of Brno, Sládek and ‘Republicanism’ had become irrelevant
even in Czech extreme-right electoral politics, where other more radical groupings
62
RMS polled less than 1.5 per cent in all regions except one (where it received 3 per cent)
26
In the run-up to the 2006 legislative elections five extreme-right and radical-right
groups including the rump RMS formed a tentative coalition – the ‘National Five’63.
However, it quickly disintegrated because of conflicts between its two largest and
most active components: the National Party (NS) which had first came to public
prominence in 2003 when it campaigned against EU entry and the Workers’ Party
64
(DS), a more radical group. Although both the NS and more recently the DS
making an electoral impact. In 2006 parliamentary elections, the NS polled only 0.17
per cent and in the 2009 European elections 0.26 per cent, did not contest the 2010
elections, having split in 2009, and seems close to bankruptcy.65 The Workers’ Party’s
aggressive protests in areas with high concentrations of Roma and paramilitary style
have recent gained it the limelight and a limited electoral base: it polled 1.07 per cent
in the European elections (theoretically entitling it to limited state funding) but was
2010. It re-formed as the Workers Party of Social Justice (DSSS) and contested the
2010 parliamentary elections, gaining a similar level of support (1.14 per cent). Mock
elections in schools showed high support for the party in some regions66. However,
despite journalists’ fears of a ‘Czech Jobbik’ in the making unlike in Hungary the
main new parties to benefit of the anti-establishment protest voting were the pro-
market anti-corruption party Public Affairs (VV), the conservative TOP09 party led
63
The two other components were the Czech Movement for National Unity (ČHNJ), National
Unification (NS)
64
Jakub Kyloušek and Josef Smolík, ‘Národní strana: resuscitace krajně-pravicové stranické rodiny?
(případová studie marginální strany před volbami 2006’ Středoevropské politické studie, 1 / VIII //
winter 2006. Online at http://www.cepsr.com/seps/clanek.php?ID=260 (accessed 1 July 2010).
65
‘Edelmannová odstoupila z vedení Národní strany’. iHNed.cz, 8 October 2009 and ‘Extremistická
Národní strana se topí v dluzích. Hrozí jí i zánik’, MF Dnes, 15 June 2009.
66
‘Výsledky studentských voleb: Jak dopadly školy i kraje’. Aktualne.cz, 14 May 2010. Online at
http://aktualne.centrum.cz/domaci/volby/grafika/2010/05/14/vysledky-studentskych-voleb-jednotlive-
skoly-kraje/ (accessed 1 July 2010).
27
by the aristocratic former foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg and small extra-
Assessing the political impact of the Republicans on Czech democracy in terms of the
effects anticipated by Kaltwasser and Mudde68 is not a clear cut task: firstly, there are
effects - or for quantifying them when they are judged to be present. Secondly, as the
electoral impact of the SPR-RSČ was rather limited it follows that many of the effects
is that for much of the period in which the Czech Republicans were an electoral force
the Czech Republic was not, strictly speaking, a new (or young) democracy but a
institutions, including the party system. This was certainly the perception of many key
political actors of the period, including the Republicans themselves. It may there be
67
See Andrew Roberts ‘2010 Czech Parliamentary Elections: Monkey Cage Election Report’, The
Monkey Cage, 1 June 2010. Online at
http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/06/2010_czech_parliamentary_elect_1.html (accessed 1 jULY
2010)
68
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser and Cas Mudde (2010) ‘Populism Corrective or Threat to
Democracy?’. Unpublished framework paper.
28
Positive effects
the SPR-RSČ had no policy influence (4.1.3), nor can it be argued that it helped
facilitate cross-class politics (4.1.4) : politics in the Czech Republic in the early 1990s
as in other post-communist CEE was not based on rigid historically based class blocs,
class structure; the concept of class was discredited and overshadow by the focus on
democratization and social transformation; and the social structure was in flux,
resulting in a transition politics that was already highly dynamic and ‘cross-class’. In
this context, consolidation of the party system implied the elimination of populist
forces such as the Republic and the emergence as major actors of more conventional,
programmatic parties with a class-based vote (as, in fact, occurred with the electoral
advance of the Social Democrats in 1996 and 1998). Nor arguably did the
politics most, if not all, aspects of economy, state and society were already politicised
and subject to political debate and political decision-making about how they should be
The Republican phenomenon did give voice to topics and groups that did not find a
‘Gypsy problem’) (4.1.1.) They also politically mobilised and politically engaged a
which might otherwise have been politically disengaged (4.1.2). In a more underlying
and a large communist-era welfare state provided a means for many of these voters to
29
express their support for the values and policies of outgoing communist regime, while
in their own minds radically disavowing it. To some extent, especially in 1990-1, the
Republicans could also be credited with introducing – or, at least, alerting the Czech
public of – that democratic politics entailed conflict and competition, not (just)
consensus (4.1.6): for a brief moment in 1992-3 it seemed to some mainstream centre-
right politicians that the Republican far-right might be the main source of opposition
in Czech democracy.
qualified. The SPR-RSČ was, in many cases, far from the only outsider vehicle for
expressing such public sentiments ‘silent majority’ issues that elites did not wish to
acknowledge. Radical anti-communist views emerged into the public arena very
splits in Civic Forum itself, which propelled Václav Klaus to the chairmanship of the
Forum in October 1990 and led to the foundation of the centre-right Civic Democratic
Party (ODS) the following year. The Democratic Union (DEU) – founded in 1996 –
representational claim. The only ‘silent majority’ issue that SPR-RSČ was unique in
voicing was that hostility to Roma – a sentiment prevalent across large parts of Czech
However, the party’s obvious extremism and lack intellectual and programmatic
30
culture of extremism and paranoia, which served to mobilise members, also cut the
party off from broader Czech society, making it, in the words of former leading
around it’.70 The net impact of its activities was to produce a closing of ranks among
other parties and confirm the taboo status of its nationalist and racist views. Only
some years after the political collapse of the Republicans did the Civic Democrats
more measured terms than the SPR-RSČ. No party, with the exception of the far-right
groups discussed, no parties has ever taken up the Republicans’ harsh approach to the
Roma minority, although Czech public opinion continues to be hostile to Roma71 and
local politicians from mainstream parties running the Senate have campaigned against
Roma in thinly disguised form have often won landslide victories. At best therefore
the SPR-RSČ offered only the mildest corrective to democracy and the
Negative effects
Negative effects are somewhat easier to enumerate, although here too the Republicans’
relatively weakness and isolation limited their scope and it would almost certainly be an
exaggeration to speak of them as ever being in any sense a threat to Czech democracy or
democratization. The Republican vision was certainly one which overwhelmingly stressed
popular sovereignty and devoid of any liberal concern for check and balances, minority
rights or the rule of law (4.2.1). Although the party’s was notionally in favour of liberal
69
An anonymous former leading Republican cited in ‘Sládkovo krédo: Věrnost, blbost a pracovitost’,
Lidové noviny, 18 June 1998.
70
Petr Vrzáň, a former Republican MP quoted in D Tácha, ‘Živili jsme Sládka’, Týden, 37/98, pp. 37-
8.
71
‘Poll shows poor relations between public and Roma’, Czech Daily Monitor, 13 May 2010.
31
rights and certainly favoured private property, it saw the relationship between state and
society in collectivist and paternalist terns: the role of the state was to care for the people
and guarantee popular living standards and well-being.72 However, the party’s lack of
power and influence left it in no position to circumvent such rights in practice (4.2.2) or
give Czech democracy a more plebiscitary character (4.2.5). Indeed, as various court cases
involving the party and its leaders show, legal provisions protecting the rights of others
were often enforced against them. The Republicans’ moralistic and radical discourse
demonizing and abusing political opponents and rejecting the legitimacy of the political
system did little to a culture of dialogue or consensus in Czech public (4.2.4). However,
given the Republicans’ pariah status, this role should not be exaggerated. Arguably – as
discussed below - there were deeper sources of highly moralized views of politics,
drew on, tapped into and expressed in specific form, but did not themselves shape. Finally,
as argued above the Republican almost certainly did, inadvertently narrow the scope of the
contraction of the effective democratic space (4.2.6) by leading mainstream parties to affirm
liberal norms regarding the (non-)ethnic character of the Czech state and the civic character
strong and embedded73 that it is unlikely that the Republican challenge, even if it had been
less self-defeatingly crude and extreme, would have opened up political space for
Overall, the role of SPR-RSČ loosely conforms to the expectations of Kaltwasser and
Mudde that weak populist forces in a weak (unconsolidated) new democracy play the
72
As Sládek put it, ensuring the security and basic living conditions of the people ‘... is not the right
but the duty of the state, if it is to have any reason for its existence’. M Sládek, To, co mám na mysli, je
svoboda, op.cit., p. 23.
73
For an in-depth discussion comparing Czech and Polish cases see Stefan Auer 2003. Liberal
Nationalism in Central Europe. London and New York. RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.
32
role more of corrective than threat to democracy. However, the SPR-RSČ’s political
isolation and lack of political and intellectual credibility left it poorly equipped to
of democratic reforms beyond the distant and fanciful prospect of its own coming to
power. The party’s most eloquent and effective statement was arguably therefore its
broadly in step with Kaltwasser and Mudde’s hypotheses about wider contexts
question: the Republicans’ nationalist, anti-communist and welfarist ideology led the
party to radical positions rejecting the legitimacy of Czech democracy and advocating
the possible use of violence which – although never acted upon and containing strong
elements of hyperbole and farce – were potentially threatening to democracy had the
party had mass support (Hyp 1). Such discourses were clearly more exclusionary
rather than inclusionary – although as Sládek’s peaen to common ‘salt of the earth’
people left behind by dissident and communist elites shows, these did exist – centring
particularly on the Roma minority. This fits the expectation (Hyp 2.) that in a country
with low levels of socio-economic inequality populists will tend to adopt discourses
of (usually ethnic exclusion). However, it should be noted that apart from the Roma
minority estimated at up to 5 per cent of the population the Czech Republic also had
33
low socio-cultural diversity and was (and is) ethnically homogeneous. 74 This and, in
line with Kaltwasser and Mudde’s arguments (Hyp 5a) the generally high levels of
swept to power by the November 1989 Velvet Revolution and elected in a landslide
victory in free elections in 1990 may explain the Republicans’ limited electoral and
political impact. The Republican case also confirms the suggested association of party
system fragmentation and populist success (Hyp 5b): the rise of the SPR-RSČ in
1991-2 coincided with the a period of flux in Czech party politics following the
disintegration of Civic Forum and its containment and subsequent demise with the
consolidation of the party system in mid-late 1990s. It should be noted, however, that
openness’ of Czech party-electoral politics may also have been a braking factor on the
anti-communist message.
The single most important facilitator and shaper of the emergence of the Republicans
ways the Republicans’ illiberal populism was simply a distorted reproduced of the
74
The relative weakness of the Republicans and the Czech radical right also conforms to theories
relating radical right success to legacies of distinct types of communist rule – concretely to the
existence of ‘patrimonial communism’ - and the presence or absence of territorially concentrated
national minorities. Herbert .P. Kitschelt and Lenka Bustoková, ‘The radical right in post-communist
Europe. Comparative perspectives on legacies and party competition’, Communist and Post-
Communist Studies., 42 (4), 2009, pp. 459-8
75
Dvořáková.’The Politics of anti-politics?’ op.cit.
34
beliefs and assumptions of anti-politically inclined, civic-minded ex-dissidents, which
were central to Czech politics in the early 1990s. Like the Civic Movement (OH)
party which sought to continue the loose non-ideological politics of Civic Forum and
was close to President Havel, the Republicans’ believed in a ‘moral’ politics centring
parties had formed), seeing conventional left-right divisions as artificial and contrived
Republicans’ illiberal populist anti-politics were somewhat more successful than the
phenomenon, which was killed off by democratic and party system consolidation.
Conclusions
Despite some underlying issues of comparability, the Association For the Republic -
common core feature archetypical West European parties of this type.76 Viewed in
76
Cas Mudde, Populist Radical Right parties in Europe. Op. cit.
35
finding is that fluid and fragmented party system can be a disadvantage where there
are many new political organizations emerging as these can compete to voice
emerging ‘silent majority’ issues. However, even allowing for their always limited
electoral support, the Republicans’ lack of power; isolated pariah status (both in the
programmatically coherent and credible radical right populist discourse muted their
impacts on Czech democracy, both positive and negative. Simply, put, the party
lacked both intellectual and leadership to capacity to adapt and improve the strategies
that had brought initial build on its initial success.77 Key to understanding the party’s
role and its strengths and weaknesses as an organisation, however, is the transitional
context in which it emerged: the fluid formative period of 2-3 years following the
immediate transition from one regime to another in 1989-90 during which democratic
and market institutions were created and many new actors, including the SPR-RSČ,
77
A common view among former Republican supporters seems to be that Sládek’s egocentric
personality and authoritarian management made the party ineffective and undermined its credibility.
Right-wing Czech blogger D-Fens comments that ‘…for a short time the its chairman [Sládek] started
to go a bit loopy [začal magořit] and in 1996-8 the only people hanging on were those on good terms
with the chairman or who didn’t oppose him..’ Republikán(ka) Andrea’, 8 March 2007. Online at
http://www.dfens-cz.com/view.php?cisloclanku=2007030803 (accessed 1 July 2010).
36
37