Česká státoprávně pokroková strana za první světové války

Almost all contemporaries were taken unawares by the First World War, including members of the Czech Constitutional Progressive Party which had been expecting a war for a number of years and had linked it to a deciding moment in the history of the struggle for Czech national liberation. And yet suddenly from one day to the next they found themselves face to face with the new war situation, manifesting itself as a de facto military and police dictatorship and previously unknown censorship. In the spirit of its political traditions, the party was involved in organising domestic and international resistance and was a principal adversary to ‘Pro-Austrian’ activism. In February 1918, it merged with other Czech civic parties striving for an independent Czech state to form the Czech Constitutional Democratic Party. Constitutional Progressive politicians and journalists played a key part in the final, but decisive, phase of the national liberation struggle – both within the new party and independently. Amidst the general euphoria of the first few weeks after the revolution, it appeared that the mission of the Constitutional Progressive Party had come to a definitive close, but the party’s ideas left an inheritance which was still to be updated in subsequent years in the struggle for the form and nature of the Republic.