Silver Medal Czechoslovak Presidents - Gustáv Husák 2017 Proof

RAZITKO_POSTOVNE_ZDARMA_NENI

Czechoslovak Presidents

The eighth addition to the Czech Mint's Czechoslovak Presidents series of silver medals is dedicated to Gustáv Husák - the only Slovak and the last representative of the communist regime to become the head of Czechoslovakia.

A communist activist and functionary, Gustáv Husák - like his predecessors Zápotocký and Novotný - experienced years of imprisonment. However, it was not the Nazis who deprived him of his freedom, but his own comrades who, following the Soviet model, sought out alleged traitors within their own ranks. Husák escaped life imprisonment thanks to an amnesty, but he still spent a full decade behind bars. He then managed to clear his name and began to profile himself as an opponent of the then communist leadership. A supporter of the reformist wing who was considered one of the "men of the Prague Spring", he soon turned around. Soon he was at the head of the party that had turned its back on him 18 years earlier, and at the same time became the chief architect and ideologue of the normalisation regime that persecuted its opponents and suppressed freedom of speech. This radical change was neither the first nor the last in the course of Husák's career. Although some memoirists describe him as an idealist who sincerely believed in communist ideas throughout his life, most historians disagree. "Through all the ups and downs of his life, Husák remained a man who yearned for power and was willing to sacrifice everything for it - he could change his views like the weather. I cannot agree that he believed what he preached throughout his life - in his many public appearances, he must have known full well that he was not telling the truth and often claimed the opposite of what he had claimed earlier," says Petr Koura, PhD, an expert on our modern history, who is the guarantor of the entire series and the author of the expert treatise that is an integral part of each medal.

The obverse side of the mintage from the workshop of ac. sculptor. Jiří Dostál's portrait of the President is accompanied by his name, the years of his birth and death and the word NORMALIZATION, into which a five-pointed star is inserted. The reverse is described by the author himself: 'The central part of the reverse side is filled with the state emblem in its contemporary form, with the area of the territory of Czechoslovakia below it. The five-pointed star, spread out like a shadow, symbolizes the period of unfreedom. In the description is the text PRESIDENT OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIALIST REPUBLIC and in the line the year of the term of office 1975-1989.'