During the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes era, HSS was in opposition and gathered vast majority of Croatian population which aimed to achieve federal state with Croatia as equal partner. With that in mind, they were named Croatian Republican Peasant Party until the royal authorities forced them to remove the Republican adjective from the name in 1925. In 1928, Puniša Račić, a Serbian ultra nationalist, shot Stjepan Radić and several other HSS deputies in the Parliament in Belgrade, after which they all died.
During communist Yugoslavia, because of one-party system HSS was illegal. In 1990, after multi-party democracy returned, HSS was reconstructed and won several seats in the Croatian Parliament. They remained in opposition until the 2000 elections when they got three ministers in the Government as part of the SDP-led coalition.
Currently, HSS have 10 representatives in the Croatian Parliament (9 domestic seats and 1 minority seat).
HSS stands for Christian morality and they favor greater state interventionism in economy.
See also: List of political parties in Croatia, Politics of Croatia