Husák, Gustáv

Czechoslovak politician, leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CCP) 1969–87 and president 1975–89. After the 1968 Prague Spring of liberalization, his task was to restore control, purge the CCP, and oversee the implementation of a new, federalist constitution. He was deposed in the popular uprising of November–December 1989 and expelled from the CCP in February 1990.

Husák, a lawyer, was active in the Resistance movement during World War II, and afterwards in the Slovak Communist Party (SCP), and was imprisoned on political grounds 1951–60. Rehabilitated, he was appointed first secretary of the SCP in 1968 and CCP leader 1969–87. As titular state president he pursued a policy of cautious reform. He stepped down as party leader in 1987, and was replaced as state president by Václav Havel in December 1989 following the ‘velvet revolution’.