Gustáv Husák

Gustáv Husák (January 10, 1913 Dúbravka (today part of Bratislava) - November 18, 1991 Bratislava) was a Slovak politician, a long-term Communist leader of Czechoslovakia and of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. His rule is known as the period of Normalization.

Life

As a son of an unemployed worker near Bratislava, he quickly became a Communist. He joined the Communist Youth Union at the age of sixteen while studying at the Gymnasium (Grammar School) in Bratislava. In 1933, when he started his studies, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC) which was banned from 1938 to 1945. During World War II he was periodically jailed by the Jozef Tiso government for illegal Communist activities, and he was one of the leaders of the 1944 Slovak National Uprising against Nazi Germany and Tiso.

Related Topics:
Communist - 1933 - Communist Party of Czechoslovakia - 1938 - 1945 - World War II - Jozef Tiso - 1944 - Slovak National Uprising - Nazi Germany

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After the war he began a career as a government official in Slovakia and party functionary in Czechoslovakia. From 1946 - 1950, he was a kind of quasi Prime Minister of Slovakia, and as such he strongly contributed to the liquidation of the Democratic Party of Slovakia, which had won 62% in the 1946 elections in Slovakia, thus preventing the Communists from seizing power in Czechoslovakia.

Related Topics:
Slovakia - 1946 - 1950 - Democratic Party of Slovakia

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In 1950 he fell victim to a Stalinist purge of the party leadership, and was sentenced for life, spending the years from 1954 to 1960 in prison. A convinced Communist, he did not cease to view his imprisonment a gross misunderstanding which he periodically stressed in several appealing letters addressed to the party leadership. It is well known that Antonín Novotný, the Czechoslovak president and first party secretary of that time, repeatedly declined to grant Husák pardon by assuring his comrades that "you do not know what he is capable of when coming to power". The true reason for Novotný's stance, however, may be ascribed to his personal politically motivated slovakophobia as well. Finally, as a result of the De-Stalinization period in Czechoslovakia, Husák's conviction was overturned and his party membership restored in 1963. By 1967 he was attacking the KSC's neo-Stalinist leadership, and he became a deputy premier of Czechoslovakia in April 1968, during the period of liberalization under party leader Alexander Dub?ek.

Related Topics:
Stalinist - 1954 - 1960 - Antonín Novotný - Czechoslovakia - 1963 - 1967 - April - 1968 - Alexander Dub?ek

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As the Soviet Union grew increasingly alarmed by Dub?ek's liberal reforms in 1968 (Prague Spring), Husák began calling for caution. After the Soviets had invaded Czechoslovakia in August and he had participated in the Czechoslovak-Soviet negotiations between the kidnapped Alexander Dub?ek and Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, he suddenly became a leader of those party members calling for the reversal of Dub?ek's reforms. This change becomes understandable if we consider that he had been in prison for six years of his life, he was a highly intelligent and pragmatic person, and if we look at one of his official speeches in Slovakia after the 1968 events, during which he ventured the rhetorical question, where his opponents (i. e. supporters of opposition against the Soviet Union) want to find those "friends" of Czechoslovakia (i. e. countries in Europe) that would come to support the country (i. e. against Soviet troops).

Related Topics:
Soviet Union - 1968 - Prague Spring - Czechoslovakia - Leonid Brezhnev - Moscow - Pragmatic - Slovakia - Europe

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Supported by Moscow, he was appointed leader of the Communist Party of Slovakia in as early as August 1968, and he succeeded Dub?ek as first secretary (title changed to general secretary in 1971) of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. He reversed Dub?ek's reforms and purged the party of its liberal members in 1969 - 1971. During the two decades of Husák's leadership, Czechoslovakia became one of the Moscow's most loyal vassals. 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 like was the case in the 1950's. This does not make his regime far from being violent, however. Under the cover of everyday stability, there was a permanent activity of the ill-fated secret police (StB) targeted at the outspoken dissidents represented later by Charter 77 as well as hundreds of unknown individuals who happened to be objects of StB's preventive strikes. Husák yielded his post as general secretary in 1987, when younger members of the Communist party wanted to participate in the power (Milo? Jake?, Ladislav Adamec). Communist rule collapsed in Czechoslovakia in late 1989, and that December Husák resigned as president. In February 1990 he was expelled from the Communist Party. He died almost forgotten on 18 November 1991.

Related Topics:
Moscow - Communist Party of Slovakia - August - 1968 - 1971 - Communist Party of Czechoslovakia - April - 1969 - Czechoslovakia - 1950's - Secret police - StB - Charter 77 - 1987 - Milo? Jake? - Ladislav Adamec - 1989 - 1990 - 18 November - 1991

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There is still some question about Husák's moral responsibility for the last two decades of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. After its collapse Husák kept saying that he was just trying to diminish the aftermaths of the Soviet invasion and had to constantly resist pressures of hard line Party Stalinists such as Vasil Bilak, Alois Indra and the like. It is true that in the early 1970's he personally pushed for an early withdrawal of the Soviet troops from the Czechoslovak territory, a thing 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". There are many facts, however, convicting him of a great deal of personal contribution to the regime's nature. As the General Secretary of the Party he was well able to control the repressive state apparatus. There are many documented cases of appeals from the part of the politically prosecuted persons, however almost none of them was given Husák's attention. As the overall decay of the Czechoslovak society was growing more and more obvious in the 1980's, Husák became a politically impotent puppet of the events. Evidence shows him emotionally sticking to his Party positions until the bitter end of Communism in Czechoslovakia.

Related Topics:
Vasil Bilak - Alois Indra - 1970's - 1991 - 1980's - Communism - Czechoslovakia

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