In April 1969, Dubcek's government was overthrown, and he was forced to resign. The new Party Secretary became Gustav Husák. He condemned in his installation speech, Dubcek and his Central Committee, and the attempts to achieve a counter-revolution. Dubcek was now sent to Turkey as ambassador. But he remained not long-lived on that position either. He was brought home to Czechoslovakia and then expelled from the party and put in home-arrest.

When Gustav Husak succeeded Dubcek, he purged approximately 400 000 Communist Party members, and he re-established the censorship more firmly than before. He was forced to allow, the stationing of Soviet and Warsaw Pact soliders on the border between Czechoslovakia and Western Europe. At the same time Brezhnev took the opportunity to "legalize" the intervention with his Brezhnev Doctrine.

In May 1975, Gustav Husak became the President, and at the same time he held the positions of chairman of the National Front and First Party Secretary. His policies were strictly conservative communistic and Soviet-friendly. Due to his orthodox communistic policies he turned his back on Mikhail Gorbachev when he tried to reform the Soviet system in the mid 80s - the Perestroika. He was not able to foresee that his repressive policies were one of the reasons of the formation of the dissident group Charta 77.

It was a dissident group formed in 1977 and its primary aim was to monitor that the 1977 Helsinki agreement on human rights was followed in Czechoslovakia. It had "branch offices" in every major country in Europe and they publicised a lot of books, interviews and magazines abroad on the situation in Czechoslovakia. During the years, many famous Czechoslovak personalities joined this movement. On of them became the Czechoslovak president after the revolution: Vaclav Havel.