biography
pronunciation:
[hoosak]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1913–91)
|
| biography:
| Czechoslovakian politician and president (1975–89), born in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. He trained as a lawyer at the Bratislava Law Faculty, and was a member of the resistance movement during World War 2. After the war he worked for the Slovak Communist Party (SCP) before being imprisoned in 1951 on political grounds. Rehabilitated in 1960, he worked at the Academy of Sciences (1963–8) before becoming first secretary of the SCP and deputy premier in 1968. After the ‘Prague Spring’ and the Soviet invasion of 1968, he replaced Dubček as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CCP). He became state president in 1975, resigned as party leader in 1987, and was replaced as state president by Vaclav Havel after the CCP regime was overthrown in 1989. |
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