Hungarian People's Army - Post-revolutionary Period
The HPA underwent a purge after the revolution. Officers were required to sign a declaration condemning the revolution, praising Hungarian-Soviet "friendship," and pledging allegiance to the new government of Janos Kadar. Nearly 20 percent of the officer corps refused to sign the declaration, even under threats, and were expelled from the army. In the year following the revolution, the army was reorganized under Soviet supervision, with increased power given to the political commanders. However, in order to assuage public opinion, the official mission of the army changed from "defending socialism" to defending Hungary.
The HPA became an integral part of the Warsaw Pact forces in 1957 but did not participate in pact military exercises until 1962. The HPA participated, although reluctantly, in the Sovietled Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. In 1989 the Hungarian government revealed that the HPA participated in the invasion because the Kadar regime feared that failure to do so would have halted Soviet exports of raw materials to Hungary.
Through the late 1980s, the HPA and Soviet troops held joint exercises on Hungarian soil twice a year, and Hungarian forces participated in exercises held on the territory of other Warsaw Pact countries. Rarely, however, did forces from the other Warsaw Pact nations conduct military exercises in Hungary.
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.
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. 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.
In the late 1980s, Hungary's defense policy was in a state of flux. The government no longer stressed the possibility of a NATO attack, nor did it consider likely a Soviet intervention to halt Hungary's march toward reform. In fact, spokesmen for both Hungary and the Soviet Union publicly alluded to a possible withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact and the proclamation of neutrality for Hungary such as that enjoyed by Finland and Austria. But both sides spoke cautiously about this possibility, and the Hungarian government stressed that it did not wish to pursue neutrality at the risk of upsetting the balance of power in Europe.
Traditionally, Hungary's role in the Warsaw Pact had been to follow the Soviet lead on matters of national and bloc defense. But even during the early and middle 1980s, when member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began installing intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Western Europe in response to the installation of Soviet SS-20 missiles in the western portion of the Soviet Union, the attitude of the Hungarian government toward the West was never as rabidly vehement as that displayed by the governments of Czechoslovakia or East Germany. In fact, the Soviet Union has criticized Hungary for not spending enough on its military and for stressing defense of the country (honvedelem) instead of defense of the countries of the Warsaw Pact.
Western analysts speculated about Hungary's military role in a Warsaw Pact conflict with the West. Hungary did not border any NATO country and therefore was not in the front line of Warsaw Pact troop deployment. It was seen to play a supporting role, primarily by supplying military engineering support and some antiaircraft defense. In a war with NATO, Hungarian forces would either be used in the Warsaw Pact's Western Theater of Military Operations against West Germany or in the Southwestern Theater of Military Operations against NATO's southern flank. In both scenarios, Hungarian forces would have to enter the territory of neutral countries. For instance, Yugoslavia's neutrality might be breached to project Soviet and Warsaw Pact power in the Mediterranean. Hungarian military engineering support would prove crucial in such a campaign.
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