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Hungary Soviet Influence
In the late 1980s, Soviet influence on Hungary's HPA
was
exercised in two ways. Numerous organizational ties linked
the
Soviet military with Hungary's armed forces. An equally
important
influence was the fact that a major component of the
Warsaw
Pact's military forces--the Southern Group of Forces--was
stationed in Hungary.
Loyalties and Control
Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev (1953-64) once said
that
the Soviet government had never trusted the Hungarian
army.
Despite the training that Hungarian officers had received
from
the Soviet military since 1948 and the Soviet infiltration
of the
HPA's top command structure, the Revolution of 1956
confirmed
Moscow's apprehensions. The events of 1956 threw the
loyalty of
even the top Hungarian military elite into question.
In the 1980s, Soviet influence on Hungarian military
officers
was much greater among the upper-level officers than among
lowerlevel officers, regimental sergeants major, or NCOs
(see Uniforms and Rank Insignia
, this ch.). The higher-ranking officers
saw
their careers tied to Hungary's association with the
Soviet Union
and the Warsaw Pact, while those of lesser ranks saw
Soviet
troops in Hungary as an army of occupation.
The Soviet Union exerted its military influence within
Hungary in a variety of ways. The obvious means were
official
ministry-to-ministry contacts and the presence of Soviet
troops
in the country. In addition, the chief Soviet
representative of
the Warsaw Treaty Organization in Hungary exercised
day-to-day
control of both the Soviet army and the Hungarian People's
Army.
Also, the Soviet military attache and staff in the Soviet
embassy
maintained a liaison office with the HSWP Central
Committee's
Government Administration and Administration Department,
the
Ministry of National Defense's Main Political
Administration, and
the Central Committee of the HPA's party organization.
And,
finally, the representative and staff of Soviet military
intelligence met frequently with various military and
political
authorities.
Nevertheless, the HPA was hardly a pawn of the Soviet
military establishment. During the 1980-81 crisis in
Poland, the
Hungarian military leadership received instructions from
the HSWP
not to intervene in Poland without orders from the party.
This
order emanated not only from a purportedly sovereign
government's
desire to retain control over its own military but also
from a
determination to maintain civilian control over the
military.
In the late 1980s, the HPA also pressed for "more
democracy"
in Warsaw Pact decision making. This term justified
requests for
giving Hungary and other non-Soviet members a greater
voice in
decision making within the pact and for rotating the
command of
the Warsaw Pact forces among all the military leaders of
the nonSoviet Warsaw Pact (NSWP) countries.
Data as of September 1989
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