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Gustáv Husák
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Husák in 1989
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| First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia | |
| In office 17 April 1969 – 17 December 1987 | |
| Preceded by | Alexander Dubček |
| Succeeded by | Miloš Jakeš |
| President of Czechoslovakia | |
| In office 29 May 1975 – 10 December 1989 | |
| Preceded by | Ludvík Svoboda |
| Succeeded by | Václav Havel |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1913-01-10)10 January 1913 Dúbravka, Hungary, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 18 November 1991(1991-11-18) (aged 78) Bratislava, Czechoslovakia[1] |
| Resting place | Cimetière de Dúbravka, Bratislava |
| Political party | Communist Party of Czechoslovakia |
| Spouse |
Magda Husáková-Lokvencová
(m. 1938; div. 1967)Viera Husáková-Čáslavská
(m. 1975; died 1977) |
| Children | 2, Vladimír (born 1944) and Ján (1946–2004) |
| Alma mater | Comenius University |
| Signature |  |
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Gustáv Husák (UK: /ˈhuːsæk/ HOO-sak,[2] US: /ˈh(j)uːsɑːk/ HOO-sahk, HEW-,[3] Slovak: [ˈɡustaːw ˈɦusaːk]; 10 January 1913 – 18 November 1991) was a Czechoslovak politician who served as the long-time First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1969 to 1987 and the President of Czechoslovakia from 1975 to 1989.
His rule is known for the period of normalization after the 1968 Prague Spring.
Gustáv Husák was born to an unemployed worker in Pozsonyhidegkút, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Bratislava-Dúbravka, Slovakia). He joined the Communist Youth Union at the age of sixteen while studying at the grammar school in Bratislava.[citation needed]
In 1933, when he started his studies at the law faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) which was banned from 1938 to 1945. During World War II, he was periodically jailed by the Jozef Tiso government for illegal Communist activities. He was one of the leaders of the 1944 Slovak National Uprising against Nazi Germany and Tiso. Husák was a member of the Presidium of the Slovak National Council from 1 to 5 September 1944.
After the war, he began a career as a government official in Slovakia and party functionary in Czechoslovakia. From 1946 to 1950, he was the head of the devolved administration of Slovakia,[citation needed] and as such strongly contributed to the liquidation of the anti-communist Christian democratic Democratic Party of Slovakia. The Democratic Party of Slovakia established in 1944 had taken 62% in the 1946 elections in Slovakia (whereas in the Czech part of the republic of then-Czechoslovakia, the clear winners were the Communists),[citation needed] thus complicating the Communist ambitions for a swift taking of power. Husák's loyalty to the central organs of the Czechoslovak Communist party as well as his considerable talent for body politics and a ruthless approach to political opponents contributed largely to the crushing of the Democratic Party's dissent in Slovakia and releasing the popular opinion in the country to the whims of prevailing political currents.
In 1950, he fell victim to a Stalinist purge of the party leadership, and was sentenced to life imprisonment, spending the years from 1954 to 1960 in the Leopoldov Prison.[citation needed] A convinced Communist, he always viewed his imprisonment as a gross misunderstanding, which he periodically stressed in several letters of appeal addressed to the party leadership. It is generally acknowledged that the then party leader and president Antonín Novotný repeatedly declined to pardon Husák, assuring his comrades that "you do not know what he is capable of if he comes to power".[citation needed]
As part of the De-Stalinization period in Czechoslovakia, Husák's conviction was overturned and his party membership restored in 1963.[citation needed] By 1967, he had become a critic of Novotný and the KSČ's neo-Stalinist leadership. In April 1968, during the Prague Spring under new party leader and fellow Slovak Alexander Dubček, Husák became a vice-premier of Czechoslovakia, responsible for overseeing reforms in Slovakia.
As the Soviet Union grew increasingly alarmed by Dubček's liberal reforms in 1968 (Prague Spring), Husák, originally Dubček's ally and a moderate supporter of the reform programme, began calling for caution.[citation needed]
After the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August, Husák participated in the Czechoslovak-Soviet negotiations between the kidnapped Dubček and Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. Husák changed course and became a leader among those party members calling for the reversal of Dubček's reforms. An account for his pragmatism was given in one of his official speeches in Slovakia after the 1968 events, during which he ventured a rhetorical question, asking where the opponents of the Soviet Union wished to find allies of Czechoslovakia that might come to support the country against Soviet troops.[citation needed]
Supported by Moscow, he was appointed leader of the Communist Party of Slovakia in as early as August 1968, and he succeeded Dubček as first secretary (title changed to general secretary in 1971) of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. He reversed Dubček's reforms and purged the party of its liberal members in 1969–1971.[citation needed] In 1975, Husák was elected President of Czechoslovakia. During the two decades of Husák's leadership, Czechoslovakia became one of Moscow's most loyal allies.
In the first years following the invasion, Husák managed to appease the outraged civil population by providing a relatively satisfactory living standard and avoiding any overt reprisals[clarification needed] like was the case in the 1950s. His regime was not a complete return to the heavy-handed Stalinism that prevailed during the first 20 years of Communist rule in the country. At the same time, the people's rights were somewhat more restricted than was the case in János Kádár's Hungary and Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia. Indeed, on the cultural level, the level of repression approached that seen in Erich Honecker's East Germany and even Nicolae Ceauşescu's Romania. There was a campaign of repression by the secret police (StB) targeting dissidents represented later by Charter 77 as well as hundreds of unknown individuals who happened to be targets of the StB's pre-emptive strikes. The repression intensified over the years as Husák grew more conservative.
Starting in the early 1970s, Husák allowed those who had been purged in the aftermath of Prague Spring to rejoin the party. However, they were required to publicly distance themselves from their past support for reform.[citation needed]
The latter part of Husák's tenure saw a struggle within the Politburo over whether to adopt Gorbachev-style reforms. While the hardliners, led by Vasiľ Biľak, were vehemently opposed to glasnost and perestroika, moderates led by Prime Minister Lubomir Strougal strongly favoured reform. Husák himself stayed neutral until April 1987, when he announced a somewhat half-hearted reform program scheduled to start in 1991.
Later that year, however, Husák yielded his post as general secretary to Miloš Jakeš in response to a desire for younger leaders (Jakeš and Ladislav Adamec) to share in power.
On 24 November 1989, the entire Presidum of the Communist Party, including Husák, resigned in the wake of the Velvet Revolution. The party officially abandoned power four days later, when the legislature deleted the portions of the Constitution that codified the party's "leading role." On 10 December, Husák swore in a new government. Although it was headed by communist Marián Čalfa, it had a non-communist majority—the first in 41 years that was not dominated by communists and/or fellow travelers. He resigned later that day, just hours after presiding over the formal end of the regime he had largely created. In an attempt to rehabilitate its image ahead of the first free elections in 44 years, the Communist Party expelled him in February 1990.
He died on 18 November 1991, at the age of 78, and was buried at the Cimetière de Dúbravka.
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There is still some question about Husák's moral culpability for the last two decades of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. After its collapse, Husák kept saying that he was just trying to diminish the aftermath of the Soviet invasion and had to constantly resist pressure from hard line Stalinists in the party such as Biľak, Alois Indra and the like.[citation needed] In the early 1970s, he personally pushed for an early withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Czechoslovak territory, which did not happen until 1991; this may be ascribed to his pragmatic attempts to ease the situation and to give an impression that things were leaning toward "normality".
However, there are many ways in which he personally contributed to the Communist government's longevity and policies. As the General Secretary of the Party, he was the nominal leader of the repressive state apparatus. There are many documented cases of appeals from politically persecuted persons, but almost none of them was given Husák's attention. As the overall decay of Czechoslovak society[clarification needed] was becoming more and more obvious in the 1980s, Husák became a politically impotent puppet of events.
Gustáv Husák was awarded the title Hero of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic three times, in 1969, 1973, and 1982. In 1983 he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.[4]
Husák allegedly confessed to a Catholic priest before his death, having previously been an atheist.[5] On his deathbed in 1991, Husák received the sacrament of reconciliation from a Catholic archbishop, Ján Sokol.[6][7] Author Michal Macháček has argued that the story of the confession is false, and the product of Catholic propaganda.[8]
Czechoslovakia:
Hero of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, thrice (1969, 1972, 1982)
Order of Klement Gottwald, four times
Order of Victorious February
Soviet Union:
Hero of the Soviet Union (1983)
Orders of Lenin, four times (1969, 1973, 1983, 1988)
Order of the October Revolution (1978)
Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1969)
Grand Cross of the Order of May (Argentina)
Order of Georgi Dimitrov, twice (Bulgaria)
Order of the Balkan Mountains (Bulgaria)
Order of Jose Marti (Cuba)
Order of Playa Girón (Cuba)
Grand Cross of the White Rose of Finland (Finland)
Order of the Flag of the Republic of Hungary (Hungary)
Order of Pahlavi (Iran)
Order of Sukhbaatar, thrice (Mongolia)
Order of the National Flag 1st class, twice (North Korea)
Order of the Grand Cross of the Rebirth of Poland (Poland)
Order of the Star of the Romanian Socialist Republic 1st class (Romania)
Order of Victory of Socialism (Romania)
Order of Civil Merit (Syria)
Order of the Yugoslav Great Star (Yugoslavia)[9]Communist Party of Czechoslovakia/KSČ (prohibited 1938, dissolved 1939–1945)
Communist Party of Slovakia/KSS (illegal 1939–1944/1945)
Slovak National Council (Slovenská národná rada) (during World War II a resistance parliament-government, since 1968 the Slovak parliament)
Council of Commissioners (Zbor povereníkov) (a quasi government responsible for Slovakia)
Czechoslovak Parliament (called National Assembly and since 1968 Federal Assembly)
Czechoslovak government
Speeches and Writings, a publication from 1986.
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | President of Czechoslovakia 29 May 1975 – 10 December 1989 |
Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia 17 April 1969 – 17 December 1987 |
Succeeded by |
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First Secretaries of the Central Committee of the KSČ
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Leaders of the ruling Communist parties of the Eastern Bloc
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