Josef Hybes

Born Jan. 29, 1850, in the village of Dašicě Čechah, Bohemia; died July 19, 1921. An activist in the Czech workers’ movement, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Born into a family of textile workers.

Hybeš worked at the textile mill in Dašicě beginning at the age of nine. In 1867 he went to Vienna, where he joined the Workers’ Educational League. He took part in the work of a number of German and Czech unions and of the labor press published in Vienna and Prague. In 1876 he was elected to the Central Committee of the Austrian Social Democratic Party and in 1878 to the Control Commission of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party.

After the arrest of J. B. Pecka in 1881, Hybeš edited the newspaper Delnicke listy until it was closed down in 1884, at which time he was exiled to Dašlicě for revolutionary activities. In 1887 he was in Brno as editor of the socialist newspaper Rovnost and helped organize the 1887 unification of the social democratic organizations of Bohemia and Moravia. He was one of the presiding officers of the Hainfeld Congress of the Austrian Social Democratic Party in 1888; defending the necessity for uncompromising class struggle by the proletariat, he led a struggle against the opportunist leadership. A delegate to the founding congress of the Second International, he took part in the second (1891), third (1893), and fourth (1896) congresses of the International. In 1897, 1902, and 1911 he was elected to the Reichsrat by the workers of Brno. He was frequently subjected to arrest and persecution by the Austrian authorities. After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, he became an ardent propagandist for its ideas and took an active part in the work of the Marxist left wing taking shape within the Social Democratic Party. In 1919 he entered the Czechoslovak provisional National Assembly, was elected a senator in April 1920, and organized and led a left Marxist club in the Senate. He presided at the 13th congress of the Social Democratic Party (Left) in 1920, the congress that resolved to join the Comintern, and helped to organize the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.