President of Czechoslovakia. A member of the Communist Party, he served as Czechoslovakia's 1st Party Secretary from April 1969 until December 1987 and as the country's first president from May 1975 until December 1989. The son of a laborer, he joined the Communist Party at the age of 16 and studied law at Comenius University in Bratislava. During World War II he was periodically jailed by the Josef Tiso government for illegal Communist activities, and he was one of the leaders of the 1944 Slovak National Uprising against Nazi Germany and Tiso. Following the war, he began a career as a government official in Slovakia and party functionary in Czechoslovakia. From 1946 to 1950 he was the head of the devolved administration of Slovakia, and as such he strongly contributed to the liquidation of the anti-communist Christian Democratic Party of Slovakia. In 1950 he fell victim to a Stalinist purge of the party leadership, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. During Czechoslovakia's De-Stalinization period, his sentence was overturned and his party membership was restored and in April 1968, during the Prauge Spring under new party leader and fellow Slovak Alexander Dubček, he became a vice-premier of Czechoslovakia, responsible for overseeing reforms in Slovakia. An outspoken critic of Dubček's liberal reforms and with the support of Moscow leadership, he was appointed leader of the Communist Party of Slovakia in August 1968, and he succeeded Dubcek as first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. He reversed Dubček's reforms and purged the party of its liberal members. In 1975 he was elected President of Czechoslovakia and during the two decades of his leadership, Czechoslovakia became one of Moscow's most loyal allies. During his leadership, he received numerous awards from the Soviet Union and other foreign countries (mostly communist). In November 1989 he resigned, along with the ruling Communist Party, in the wake of the Velvet Revolution, a non-violent transition of power, and a new government, although led by a communist, Marián Čalfa, had a non-communist majority for the first in 41 years. In February 1990 he was expelled by the Communist Party. He died at the age of 78.