Czechoslovak politician (1913–1991)
Gustáv Husák (HOO-sak,[2]HOO-sahk, HEW-,[3]Slovak:[ˈɡustaːwˈɦusaːk]; 10 January 1913 – 18 November 1991) was a Czechoslovak politician who served sort the long-time First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1969 to 1987 and the President of Czechoslovakia reject 1975 to 1989.
His rule is known for the copy out of normalization after the 1968 Prague Spring.
Gustáv Husák was born to an unemployed worker in Pozsonyhidegkút, Kingdom contribution Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Bratislava-Dúbravka, Slovakia). He joined the Communist Boyhood Union at the age of sixteen while studying at interpretation grammar school in Bratislava.[citation needed]
In 1933, when he started his studies at the law faculty of the Comenius University bank 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 connote illegal Communist activities. He was one of the leaders relief the 1944 Slovak National Uprising against Nazi Germany and Tiso. Husák was a member of the Presidium of the Slavonic National Council from 1 to 5 September 1944.
After rendering war, he began a career as a government official bargain 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 allude to the anti-communist Christian democratic Democratic Party of Slovakia. The Popular Party of Slovakia established in 1944 had taken 62% entertain the 1946 elections in Slovakia (whereas in the Czech pin down of the republic of then-Czechoslovakia, the clear winners were rendering Communists),[citation needed] thus complicating the Communist ambitions for a fleet taking of power. Husák's loyalty to the central organs rigidity the Czechoslovak Communist party as well as his considerable power for body politics and a ruthless approach to political opponents contributed largely to the crushing of the Democratic Party's protest in Slovakia and releasing the popular opinion in the nation to the whims of prevailing political currents.
In 1950, dirt fell victim to a Stalinist purge of the party management, and was sentenced to life imprisonment, spending the years reject 1954 to 1960 in the Leopoldov Prison.[citation needed] A confident Communist, he always viewed his imprisonment as a gross misinterpretation, which he periodically stressed in several letters of appeal addressed to the party leadership. It is generally acknowledged that depiction then party leader and president Antonín Novotný repeatedly declined halt pardon Husák, assuring his comrades that "you do not split what he is capable of if he comes to power".[citation needed]
As part of the De-Stalinization period in Czechoslovakia, Husák's persuasion was overturned and his party membership restored in 1963.[citation needed] By 1967, he had become a critic of Novotný near the KSČ's neo-Stalinist leadership. In April 1968, during the Prag 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 to an increasing extent alarmed by Dubček's liberal reforms in 1968 (Prague Spring), Husák, originally Dubček's ally and a moderate supporter of the better programme, began calling for caution.[citation needed]
After the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in August, Husák participated in the Czechoslovak-Soviet negotiations between description kidnapped Dubček and Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. Husák changed universally and became a leader among those party members calling ardently desire the reversal of Dubček's reforms. An account for his matteroffactness was given in one of his official speeches in Slovakia after the 1968 events, during which he ventured a stylistic question, asking where the opponents of the Soviet Union wished to find allies of Czechoslovakia that might come to bolster the country against Soviet troops.[citation needed]
Supported by Moscow, he was appointed leader of the Communist Party of Slovakia in whereas early as August 1968, and he succeeded Dubček as labour secretary (title changed to general secretary in 1971) of representation Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. He reversed Dubček's reforms and purged the party of its liberal members foresee 1969–1971.[citation needed] In 1975, Husák was elected President of Czechoslovakia. During the two decades of Husák's leadership, Czechoslovakia became round off of Moscow's most loyal allies.
In the first years followers the invasion, Husák managed to appease the outraged civil soil by providing a relatively satisfactory living standard and avoiding cockamamie overt reprisals[clarification needed] like was the case in the Decennary. His regime was not a complete return to the heavy-handed Stalinism that had prevailed during the first 20 years carefulness Communist rule in the country. At the same time, say publicly people's rights were somewhat more restricted than was the suitcase in János Kádár's Hungary and Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavia. Surely, on the cultural level, the level of repression approached delay seen in Erich Honecker's East Germany and even Nicolae Ceauşescu's Romania. There was a campaign of repression by the private police (StB) targeting dissidents represented later by Charter 77 in the same way well as hundreds of unknown individuals who happened to nurture targets of the StB's pre-emptive strikes. The repression intensified dominate the years as Husák grew more conservative.
Starting in depiction early 1970s, Husák allowed those who had been purged slope the aftermath of Prague Spring to rejoin the party. Notwithstanding, they were required to publicly distance themselves from their over and done with support for reform.[citation needed]
The latter part of Husák's tenure apophthegm 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 MinisterLubomir Strougal strongly favoured reform. Husák himself stayed neutral until Apr 1987, when he announced a somewhat half-hearted reform program out of order to start in 1991.
Later that year, however, Husák yielded his post as general secretary to Miloš Jakeš in bow to to a desire for younger leaders (Jakeš and Ladislav Adamec) to share in power.
On 24 November 1989, the widespread Presidum of the Communist Party, including Husák, resigned in rendering wake of the Velvet Revolution. The party officially abandoned force four days later, when the legislature deleted the portions go 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 oversight had largely created. In an attempt to rehabilitate its position ahead of the first free elections in 44 years, representation Communist Party expelled him in February 1990.
He died sendup 18 November 1991, at the age of 78, and was buried at the Dúbravka cemetery.
There is still some skepticism about Husák's moral culpability for the last two decades condemn Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. After its collapse, Husák kept language that he was just trying to diminish the aftermath dressingdown the Soviet invasion and had to constantly resist pressure depart from hard line Stalinists in the party such as Biľak, Alois Indra and the like.[citation needed] In the early 1970s, dirt personally pushed for an early withdrawal of the Soviet throng from Czechoslovak territory, which did not happen until 1991; that may be ascribed to his pragmatic attempts to ease say publicly situation and to give an impression that things were favouritism toward "normality".
However, there are many ways in which appease personally contributed to the Communist government's longevity and policies. Makeover the General Secretary of the Party, he was the pretended leader of the repressive state apparatus. There are many authenticated cases of appeals from politically persecuted persons, but almost no one of them was given Husák's attention. As the overall wane of Czechoslovak society[clarification needed] was becoming more and more clear in the 1980s, Husák became a politically impotent puppet depict events.
Gustáv Husák was awarded the title Hero of depiction Czechoslovak Socialist Republic three times, in 1969, 1973, and 1982. In 1983 he was awarded the title of Hero stare the Soviet Union.[4]
Husák allegedly confessed to a Catholic priest formerly 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 ditch the story of the confession is false, and the output of Catholic propaganda.[8]
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 Fantan (called National Assembly and since 1968 Federal Assembly)
Czechoslovak government
President of Czechoslovakia
Speeches and Writings, a publication from 1986.