The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law

The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law (PMPWBL, Strana mírného pokroku v mezích zákona (SMPVMZ)) was a satirical political party in Cisleithania (Austro-Hungary), founded by Jaroslav Hašek in 1911. The party campaigned satirically for election to the Imperial Council (Austria). Due to their dual nature as both a political "party" and a political-artistic "action group", it is often extremely difficult to differentiate the reality from the fiction of the SMPVMZ. According to the statements of the party leader Hašek, the party was founded in 1904 in the restaurant 'The Golden Liter' (Czech: Zlatý litr) in Prague's Vinohrady quarter. Other participants were the writer František Langer and the Prague Technikum official Eduard Drobílek, who came up with the idea and served as treasurer. The party name referred to the controversial Imperial Rescript dated September 12, 1871, in which the Bohemian Landtag, as the representative organ of Czech political power, was asked to contribute to "the contemporary constitutional order, in the spirit of moderation and reconciliation." The party was most likely founded as a direct response to the overly accommodating behavior of the Czech Social Democratic Party ("Evolution, not Revolution"), whose Prague representatives held events in Zlatý litr. The party slogan abbreviation was "SRK", which officially stood for "Solidarity, Rights and Comradeship" (Solidarität, Recht und Kameradschaft) but in practice meant Slivovitz, Rum and Kontusovka. The party grew slowly. By its own account, there were only eight members as of December 14, 1904. As time went on the membership grew to include a few lawyers and doctors, as well as numerous figures from Prague's cultural scene: the anarchist journalist and publisher Antonín Bouček; satirist, painter, and anarchist František Gellner, who served two stints as party secretary; writers and satirists including Karel Toman, Josef Mach, Gustav Roger Opočenský, Louis Křikava, and Josef Skružný; the anarchist poet Josef Rosenzweig-Moir; the journalists Karel Pelant and Karel V.