Gustáv Husák

Gustáv Husák (in the middle) in 1971 on a visit to the GDR. Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker are also pictured. Gustáv Husák ( , ; ; born Augustin Husák; 10 January 1913 – 18 November 1991) was a Slovak 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.

Trained as a lawyer, Husák rose through the ranks of the prewar and wartime Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and played a leading role in the abortive Slovak National Uprising. He participated in the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, but fell victim to a Stalinist purge in 1950. After being released from prison, he became a critic of Antonín Novotný's hardline governance, for which he was made a vice-premier in the government of Alexander Dubček during the Prague Spring. However, Husák came to share the Soviet Union's suspicion of Dubček's reforms, and established himself as a staunch anti-reformist in the wake of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Husák was soon appointed leader of the Communist Party and General Secretary in Dubček's place, and presided over the period of normalization, whereby the Czechoslovak government reestablished its ties to the Warsaw Pact and aimed to preserve stable communist governance while minimizing social unrest.

The reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev challenged Husák's governance, but he initially hoped to stay neutral in the conflict between hardliners and reformists. Husák's resignation from leadership in 1987 did little to thwart the collapse of communist rule in the 1989 Velvet Revolution. He died in 1991, a few months after he was expelled by the reformed Communist Party. Husák was known as a sophisticated intellectual and skilled politician, but his pro-Soviet leadership was repudiated by the Velvet Revolution and subsequent political developments in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Early life, education, and career Augustin Husák was born to Nikodém Husák and his wife Magdaléna in Pozsonyhidegkút, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Bratislava-Dúbravka, Slovakia). His father was a trained quarryman and farmer who was disabled in World War I and was sporadically employed afterwards; he worked in municipal administration and briefly served as mayor of Dúbravka. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was one year old and his father remarried; the household would eventually become crowded with ten members. Early in his schooling, he began going by the name of Gustáv, the name of his grandfather, he fully adopted the name after using it as a nom de guerre during World War II.

He distinguished himself academically and spent much of his youth at boarding schools in Bratislava, but his family's relative poverty necessitated that he take up odd jobs and send his earnings home. He joined the Communist Youth Union at the age of sixteen, after being influenced by ideologically engaged colleagues at the Patrónka arms factory, where he worked for a summer. He joined the Youth Union in 1929 at a crucial point, when the Czechoslovak Communist Party was being more closely integrated into the Comintern. Husák aligned himself with the pro-Soviet faction under Klement Gottwald. He met his wife, Magda Lokvencová, at a communist conference in Bratislava in 1935, and married her in 1939.

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.

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 Dúbravka cemetery.

Personal life He was married twice, first to actor Magda Husáková-Lokvencová from 1938 to 1967 (she died the year before). He then was married to Viera Husáková-Čáslavská. The marriage to Husáková-Čáslavská did not take place until 1973, when Husák visited to India. Because Husák was divorced, a hasty and secret wedding took place before the trip. Viera continued to live in Bratislava thereafter, traveling to Prague only for official events or weekends. In 20 October 1977, she died in a helicopter crash at Bratislava Airport. His wife's death shook him greatly, he completely withdrew from public life for several weeks, and his mental state was evident even in his New Year's speech on January 1, 1978. He had two sons with his first wife, Vladimir and Jan. Vladimir was born in Moscow. Outside of Czech and Slovak, he was fluent in Russian and German.

Legacy

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. 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 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.

Husák allegedly confessed to a Catholic priest before his death, having previously been an atheist. On his deathbed in 1991, Husák received the sacrament of reconciliation from a Catholic archbishop, Ján Sokol.

Awards and honors

Other countries:

Order of Karl Marx, twice (East Germany)

Functions Communist Party of Czechoslovakia/KSČ (prohibited 1938, dissolved 1939–1945) 1933-1938/1939 and 1989 (December)-(February) 1990: common member spring 1945: member of its Provisional Central Committee (established in the parts of Czechoslovakia liberated by the Red Army) 1949-1951 and 1968 (31 August)-1989: member of its Central Committee 1968 (31 August)-1989 (24 November): member of its Presidium 1969 (April) -1987 (December): one of its secretaries 1969 (April)-1987: party leader (First Secretary, since 1971 Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) 1987 (17 December): resigned as party leader (replaced by Miloš Jakeš)

Communist Party of Slovakia/KSS (illegal 1939–1944/1945) 1939-1945: one of its leaders 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) 1943-1944: one of its main organizers 1944-1950 and 1968 (December)-1971: its deputy 1944-1950: member of its Presidium 1944-1945: vice-chairman

Board of Commissioners (Zbor povereníkov) (a quasi government responsible for Slovakia) 1944-1945: Commissioner of the Interior 1945-1946: Commissioner of Transport and Technology in Slovakia 1946-1950: President of the Board 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 the Prague Spring Czechoslovak government

President of Czechoslovakia 1975-1989: President of Czechoslovakia 1989 (10 December): resigned as the President of Czechoslovakia within the Velvet Revolution

Other important data 1929–1932: member of the Communist Youth Union (prohibited in 1932) 1933–1937: studies at the law faculty of the Comenius 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 the Soviet Union 1940–1944: four times shortly jailed by the government of Jozef Tiso for illegal Communist activities 1943–1944: member of the 5th illegal KSS Central Committee, one of the main organizers of the anti-Nazi Slovak 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 1950: charged with "bourgeois nationalism" with respect to Slovakia (see History of Czechoslovakia) 1951: arrested 1954: sentenced to life imprisonment 1954–1960: imprisoned 1960: conditionally released through an amnesty 1963: his conviction was overturned and his party membership restored and he was rehabilitated 1963–1968: scientific employee of the State and Law Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences 1969 (April)–1987 (December): chief commander of the Popular Militia 1971 (January)–1987 (December): president and member of the Presidium of the National Front Central Committee