Paul Horvat/International Peasant Movement collection, 1931-1971

Old Resource ID was PHorvat

Paul Horvat was born to a Slovene peasant family in 1901 in the village of Brantonci, then part of Habsburg ruled Austria-Hungary. As a teenager Paul Horvat began to organize efforts by Slovene peasants to sell their products directly to consumers. Horvat's economic activities were soon complemented by military efforts as he organized a Slovene resistance movement to fight Austrian and German forces. Horvat's Farmers Labor Movement and peasant guerrillas also clashed with Bela Kun's communist forces.

Active in the Slovene underground throughout the interwar period, Paul Horvat again took an active role in organizing military resistance among Slovene peasants fighting against the German invaders in World War II and also taking part in Yugoslavia's bloody civil war. Horvat fled into exile after Tito's partisans established a communist Yugoslavia in 1945.

Arriving in the United States in 1952, Horvat continued to his previous economic and political organizing efforts in an American context. His International Peasant Movement supported the conservative social values, nationalism, dignity, and economic independence of the world's peasant population. Horvat clashed with big business interests, wholesalers, and other groups who resisted land reform in defense of the small farmer while simultaneously pursuing an unwavering anti-communist line. Horvat argued that the world's peasants were the majority of the human population and should secure their future through their own efforts. Paul Horvat himself worked in a Gary steel mill, a poultry farm, even as a domestic servant until he and his wife were able to establish their own successful landscaping business. He organized the Community Thrift Club, Inc. as a means of bringing Chicago's inner city communities in contact with Illinois's struggling small farmers. Community organizations would organize urban food cooperatives, often African-American, who would agree to purchase produce from poor farmers, usually white, at prices slightly higher than wholesale. Farmers received higher profits while urban families could buy some groceries at lower prices.

The Paul Horvat/International Peasant Movement Collection includes clippings, correspondence, speeches, notes, flyers, broadsheets, an excerpt from the U.S. Congressional Record regarding the activities of Paul Horvat and the International Peasant Movement. Some material is also included from the Community Thrift Club, Inc. organization and affiliated food cooperative organizations.

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Paul Horvat/International Peasant Movement collection, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago

• NamesHorvat, Paul -- Archives
• Subject
  • Chicago Community Organizations.
  • Chicago Ethnic Groups.