Husak, Gustav (1913-1991), served from 1975 to 1989 as president of Czechoslovakia, the former Eastern European country that was divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Under Husak, Czechoslovakia remained a tightly controlled Communist state and a loyal ally of the Soviet Union.
Husak was born on Jan. 10, 1913, in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. He became a Slovak Communist Party activist in 1933 while he was studying law at Comenius University. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II (1939-1945), Husak was a leader in the resistance movement. In 1944, he helped to lead the anti-Nazi Slovak national uprising.
After the war, Husak was both a party and a state official. Because of his suspected Slovak nationalism, however, he became a victim of the Stalinist purges, in which Communists suspected of opposing Soviet leader Joseph Stalin or his policies were executed or imprisoned. Husak was charged with treason and sabotage, expelled from the party, and imprisoned from 1951 to 1960. He was rehabilitated (allowed to return to public life) in 1963. Following five years of research in the Institute of State and Law at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Husak—by then a prominent liberal—became one of five deputy premiers.
In 1968, Husak was a member of a reforming liberal government led by Alexander Dubcek. That government’s program of political and social changes, known as the “Prague Spring”, was cut short by a Soviet invasion in August 1968. Husak, a cautious, moderate, and pragmatic (realistic) politician in comparison to Dubcek, came to support the invasion. In April 1969, after a power struggle, Husak replaced Dubcek as first secretary (leader) of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. The Husak government eliminated most of Dubcek’s reforms and reestablished tight political controls and censorship of the press. Husak took the title of general secretary of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1971. Four years later, he became president of the country and also continued to serve as Communist Party leader.
In 1987, Husak gave up the leadership of the Communist Party but remained president. In 1989, as Communism collapsed in one Eastern European country after another, Czechoslovakia itself underwent a peaceful transition known as the “Velvet Revolution.” Husak resigned as president in December 1989 and was succeeded by the writer Vaclav Havel. Husak died in Bratislava on Nov. 18, 1991.
