(1983) MiNo. 2698 ** - Czechoslovakia - 70th anniversary of the birth of President Gustáv Husák

Gustav Husák (1913-1991)

He was a Czechoslovak politician, lawyer and statesman who became a key figure of normalisation after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. He came from Slovakia, where he was active in the communist movement in the 1930s.

After World War II, he was active in building the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, but in the 1950s he was accused of "bourgeois nationalism" and convicted in a political trial. After several years in prison, he was rehabilitated in 1960.

In 1969 he was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) and two years later became general secretary. Husák's period of rule, known as normalisation, was characterised by political purges, censorship and suppression of opposition. Nevertheless, he managed to stabilise the country economically and politically, albeit at the cost of curtailing civil rights and freedoms.

In 1975, he became president of Czechoslovakia, cementing his dominant position in politics. He served as president until 1989, when he was forced to resign in the wake of the Velvet Revolution. Gustav Husák remains a controversial figure in Czechoslovak history - seen by some as a pragmatist and by others as a symbol of a repressive regime.