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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 democraticDemocratic 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 aStalinist purge of the party leadership, and was sentenced to life imprisonment, spending the years from 1954 to 1960 in theLeopoldov 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 presidentAntonín 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 theDe-Stalinization period inCzechoslovakia, 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'sneo-Stalinist leadership. In April 1968, during thePrague Spring under new party leader and fellow SlovakAlexander Dubček, Husák became a vice-premier of Czechoslovakia, responsible for overseeing reforms in Slovakia.
As theSoviet 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 andLeonid 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 hispragmatism was given in one of his official speeches inSlovakia 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 theCommunist Party of Slovakia in as early as August 1968, and he succeeded Dubček as first secretary (title changed to general secretary in 1971) of theCommunist 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 electedPresident 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] as were seen in the 1950s. His regime was not a complete return to the heavy-handed Stalinism that had 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 inJános Kádár'sHungary andJosip Broz Tito'sYugoslavia. Indeed, on the cultural level, the level of repression approached that seen inErich Honecker'sEast Germany and evenNicolae Ceauşescu'sRomania. There was a campaign of repression by thesecret police (StB) targeting dissidents represented later byCharter 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 adoptGorbachev-style reforms. While the hardliners, led byVasiľ Biľak, were vehemently opposed toglasnost andperestroika, moderates led byPrime MinisterLubomir 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 toMiloš Jakeš in response to a desire for younger leaders (Jakeš andLadislav Adamec) to share in power.
On 24 November 1989, the entire Presidum of the Communist Party, including Husák, resigned in the wake of theVelvet 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 communistMarián Čalfa, it had a non-communist majority—the first in 41 years that was not dominated by communists and/orfellow 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 ofthe 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 Dúbravka cemetery.[3]
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.
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]
1943-1944: member of its 5th illegal Central Committee
1944-1950 and 1968–1971: member of its Central Committee and (except for 1970–1971) member of its Presidium and (except for 1944–1948) one of its secretaries
1944-1945: vice-chairman
1968 (28 August)-1969: party leader ("first secretary")
Slovak National Council (Slovenská národná rada) (during World War II a resistance parliament-government, since 1968 the Slovak parliament)
1945-1946: Commissioner of Transport and Technology in Slovakia
1946-1950: President of the Council of Commissioners, in which he contributed to the suppression of the influential Democratic Party of Slovakia by the Communists (1947–1948)
1948-1950: Commissioner of Agriculture and Land Reform in Slovakia
1949-1950: Commissioner of Alimentation in Slovakia
Czechoslovak Parliament (called National Assembly and since 1968 Federal Assembly)
1945-1951 and 1968–1975: deputy
1969-1975: member of its Presidium
Czechoslovak government
1968 (April–December): a vice-premier of thePrague Spring Czechoslovak government
1929–1932: member of the Communist Youth Union (prohibited in 1932)
1933–1937: studies at the law faculty of theComenius University in Bratislava,
1938 received a title Dr. (of law) and started to work as a lawyer in Bratislava
1936–1938: member of the Slovak Youth Union (1936 founder and secretary)
1937–1938 vice-president of the Slovak Students Union and secretary of the Association for the Economic and Cultural Cooperation with theSoviet Union
1940–1944: four times shortly jailed by the government ofJozef Tiso for illegal Communist activities
1943–1944: member of the 5th illegal KSS Central Committee, one of the main organizers of the anti-NaziSlovak National Uprising (1944) and of its leading body, the Slovak National Council
late 1944–February 1945: he fled to Moscow after the defeat of the Slovak National Uprising
MACHÁČEK, Michal.The Strange Unity. Gustáv Husák and Power and Political Fights Inside the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia as Exemplified by Presidency Issue (1969–1975), in:Czech Journal of Contemporary History, 2016, vol. 4, 104–128 pp.[1].
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