Gustav Husak joined the Communist Party in Slovakia in 1933 while at university. As a lawyer he participated in underground Communist activities and was jailed by Slovakia's puppet government during World War II. After his release he joined the Central Committee of the Communist Party and helped direct the anti-fascist Slovak national uprising of 1944.

After the war Husak became a party official, but he was a victim of a Stalinist purge in 1951 and was jailed from 1954 to 1960.

On his release he found a low-level government job in Bratislava. In 1963 his conviction was overturned and his Communist Party membership restored. Under party leader Alexander Dubcek, he rose to deputy premier of Czechoslovakia in April 1968.

After the Soviet invasion of 1968 Husák took over as Communist party leader and reversed Dubcek's reforms. He re-established close ties with the USSR and held tight party control over the government. Liberal members of the party were purged.

In 1987 he stepped down as general secretary when it became clear that his opposition to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's idea of perestroika ("restructuring") was unpopular.

When Communist rule collapsed in 1989 Husak resigned. His successor was playwright and former dissident Vaclac Havel