Gustáv Husák

, Gustav Husak ( born January 10, 1913 in Dubravka, † November 18, 1991 in Bratislava) was a Slovak lawyer and communist politician. As General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1969 to 1987 Husak was the most powerful politician in Czechoslovakia.

Husak resigned as leader of the Slovak Communists during the Slovak National Uprising public appearance and led the Interior Ministry of the uprising Government (1944-1945), after which he was Prime Minister of the Slovak regional government ( 1946-1950 ). After he was arrested during the Stalinist purges in 1950 and condemned as " bourgeois nationalist ", followed by a long-term imprisonment ( 1950-1960 ). In the 1960s, he was then gradually rehabilitated. After the suppression of the "Prague Spring", on which to Husak actively involved, he became General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (1969-1987) and later as the first and only Slovak Czechoslovak President (1975-1989), as which he one of the leading personalities of the so-called "normalization" was: he assumed after the "Prague Spring" slowly but systematically the moscow-backed policy restores.

Life

Husak was in 1929 a member of the Communist Youth League and in 1933 the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. After graduating from law school, he was from 1938 to 1942 in a law firm operates, then as an employee of the Slovak Association of Freight Forwarders. His political activities continued Husak continued even after the banning of the party and in 1943 was a member of the dreiköpfigem governing body of the illegal Communist Party. He was one of the leaders of the Slovak National Uprising and was, among other things Deputy Parliament Speaker and Commissioner for Home Affairs. After the end of World War II, he held various positions in the party and was from 1946 to 1950 Chairman of the " Committee Tasked " ( ie, in fact the Slovak government ).

In May 1950, he was "bourgeois nationalism " relieved of all offices under the accusation of being arrested in February 1951 and sentenced to life in prison in August 1954 and held inter alia in prison Leopoldov. In 1960, he was amnestied and 1963 rehabilitated in due form. Until 1968 he worked at the Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences, 1968, he actively participated in the Prague Spring, was in April 1968 Deputy Prime Minister and the end of August 1968 First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia. After the deposition of Alexander Dubček was elected to pressure from the Soviet Union in April 1969, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and eliminated gradually reform the results of the Prague Spring.

In 1975, he took over from Ludvik Svoboda, the Office of the President, as leader of the Communist Party, he was replaced in 1987 by Milouš Jakeš. As of November 17, 1989, he became more and more by the mass protests of the so-called Velvet Revolution under pressure and finally appointed on 10 December 1989, a new government under Marián Čalfa in which the Communist Party no longer had a majority ( members were Václav Klaus and Jiří service beer). On the same day he resigned as president. His successor December 29, 1989, Václav Havel was elected.

Works

• , Gustav Husak, Czechoslovakia for socialism and peace. Selected speeches and essays 1944 - 1977th Publisher Marxist leaves, Frankfurt am Main, 1978, ISBN 3-88012-528-7.
• , Gustav Husak; Selected speeches and essays April 1969 - April 1971 Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1971..
• , Gustav Husak, The Slovak National Uprising. 1st Edition: Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1972.