Rajmund Fekete
When the Red Army entered Hungary in August 1944, no one expected it to remain there for long. And yet. The Soviet soldiers finally left the country in 1991, almost half a century later.
For many, for those persecuted by the Nazis, the Russian soldier also brought a kind of liberation. But he did not bring freedom, because he has none.
Sándor Márai
Contemporary accounts show that the Russian invasion was looked forward to by some with “equanimity”, but optimism was quickly replaced by bitter reality when it turned out that the Soviet troops had arrived in the country as not liberators but conquerors. It also became clear that the Soviet occupation would determine the fate of Hungary not only militarily but also politically. Soviet troops would be present in Hungary for more than forty-five years, initially as a guarantee of the communist regime’s establishment, then its continuation, and later becoming its symbolic embodiment. It is no coincidence that during the overthrow of communism there was complete societal consensus on demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
Double Occupation
Last night I dreamt that the Germans had left and no one came to replace them.
Imre Kovács
On 19 March 1944, Nazi Germany invaded Hungary and the country got a taste of what its future would be like if the Nazis won. Hitler’s Germany invaded Hungary in order to have unrestricted control over the country’s material and human resources in the service of its “final victory”. They set up a puppet government and set about decapitating Hungarian society, settling the “Jewish question” in the National Socialist manner: the “final solution”. Under the jurisdiction of the Third Reich, within two months more than 400,000 Jews were transported from the country’s provincial regions to labour and death camps.
On 27 August 1944, Soviet troops crossed the Hungarian border and the country became the scene of a clash between two great powers fighting each other to the death. While the Soviet forces gradually occupied the country from the east, Hungary’s Arrow Cross government exercised supreme power in Western Transdanubia. Meanwhile Soviet troops looted the country, raped tens of thousands of Hungarian women, and dragged our compatriots off to forced labour camps (málenkij robot). The hell of Soviet forced labour was experienced by nearly 700,000 Hungarians, of whom 300,000 never returned.
Despite all the humiliation, the people of Hungary hoped that the Soviets would leave Hungary and the country would regain its independence after the signing of the peace treaty. In part, Hungarian society believed this would be the case because Hungary had regained its independence after the First World War, despite being mutilated by the Trianon peace diktat of 1920. Moreover, since the Red Army had not Sovietized the country “on the march”, there was still hope that a democratic Hungary could be saved. This uncertainty is illustrated by the fact that even the Hungarian Communist Party leader Mátyás Rákosi did not know the exact timetable: “At some point the Allied Control Commission will leave Hungary; and then, I fear, our democracy will be left hanging in the air.” This is further proof that the success of the Communist Party’s ambitions was linked to the activities of the occupiers. But Hungarian communists could rest easy because during the war years Stalin had already made it clear that he would enter the Central European region as not a liberator but an occupier: “If one occupies territory, one imposes one’s own societal system on that territory. Wherever one’s army advances to, there one imposes one’s own system.” On the one hand, Stalin’s occupation was intended to create a western security zone for the Soviet empire; on the other hand, it gave him enormous recompense, not only against the Germans, but also for losing the Polish–Soviet war after the First World War, as in this way he could count Poland among the “spoils of war”. Moreover, the Paris Peace Treaty of 10 February 1947 was essentially a further extension of the occupation. The construction of a totalitarian state could begin in an endless chapter of unbridled terror and intimidation.
1956
For communism the Hungarian Revolution was the beginning of the end.
Milovan Djilas
The status quo changed when Austria regained its independence in 1955 because the “temporary” presence of Soviet troops in Hungary became legally meaningless. To remedy this, another signing ceremony took place in Warsaw the day before the treaty declaring Austria’s independence was signed. This was for a defence and military cooperation agreement involving the Soviet Union and seven other states of Soviet interest. This treaty, the Warsaw Pact, was intended to meet the Soviet Union’s ongoing security needs, but it did not in itself allow Soviet troops to remain on Hungarian territory, and Hungary’s party leadership made its special contribution to this.
As early as the summer of 1956, the commander of the Soviet troops occupying our country was instructed to prepare a plan in case his forces had to be deployed “to defend and, if necessary, restore the socialist societal order”. By October, the Soviet officers stationed in Hungary had already sensed societal discontent and were keeping their superiors informed on a continuous basis. So, they were not at all surprised when, on 23 October, Hungary’s communist leader Ernő Gerő asked them to send in their troops. The Soviet political and military leadership decided to restore order in Hungary by military force. The military leadership mobilized huge forces, in terms of both troops and military technology. The last time such a mobilization had taken place was during the Second World War. At that time there were around 250,000 to 300,000 soldiers in Hungary, together with 2,500 tanks and escort vehicles. Once more, the Soviet Union prepared for war against Hungary and won a Pyrrhic victory. It retained its empire, preserved its place in the bipolar world order, and justified the purpose of its army. The 1956 Revolution and Freedom Fight exposed the true nature of the communists, and there was nothing more they could do to change that.
“Temporary” Occupation – For Another 35 Years
It is better, Comrade Khrushchev, for your soldiers to stay with us…
János Kádár
Although the legitimacy of the incoming Kádár regime rested on the crushing of the Revolution and Freedom Fight, on merciless and unprecedented reprisals, and on the presence of the Soviet army, the only thing that maintained the regime’s equilibrium up until the overthrow of communism was reciprocal fear. Kádár and the communists were terrified of the people and wary of overplaying their hand. The Hungarian people were afraid of them because they knew exactly how ruthless they were and how they would do anything to maintain their power.
So, after the defeat of the Freedom Fight there was an urgent need to settle issues related to the occupation. As a result, on 27 May 1957, the two countries concluded the first “agreement”, which in principle settled the status of the Soviet army temporarily stationed in Hungary. However, this was no more than empty rhetoric and contained no meaningful information about the numbers and location of the occupying forces. Likewise, the financial and economic issues related to the occupation remained unresolved. By the summer of 1957, the number of occupying forces had been significantly reduced, but there were still roughly 80,000 to 100,000 Soviet troops in the country – a number that would steadily decrease over the following decades as missile technology came to the fore. But there was one important point in the agreement that is worth mentioning: no Hungarian court had jurisdiction over crimes committed by Soviet soldiers in Hungary and/or against Hungarian citizens; only a Soviet military court could rule in such cases, based on the Soviet military code. In the 1970s and 1980s, ever more cases of conflict between the occupying forces and civilians came to light, and the Soviet perpetrators could not be tried by Hungarian courts. For example, a tank driver who broke out of his barracks with a tank to go home for his brother’s funeral could not be tried. En route, he ran over and injured several people. Although he was captured and arrested, he was not convicted of his crimes by a Hungarian court. Incidents like this refreshed the memory of anyone who had forgotten that they were living in an occupied country.
Goodbye Lenin!
If we do not lose sight of the spirit of ’56, we can elect a government which will begin negotiations without delay for an immediate start to the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Viktor Orbán
The decisive turning point in the withdrawal of the occupying Soviet army came with Mikhail Gorbachev’s March 1988 declaration that recognized the “inalienable right” of allied countries’ sister parties to decide independently on the social and political direction of their countries. Moreover, he also rejected any future interference in the internal affairs of other countries – a public break with the Brezhnev Doctrine, which had been in force for twenty years. On 9 November 1988, Moscow announced the completion of a plan for the partial withdrawal of Soviet forces from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and the GDR. At that time – and even later – the Soviet leadership had only vague ideas about the future of the Central and Eastern European region and the role of the Soviet Union in Europe and the region.
Gorbachev’s announcement at the UN General Assembly in December 1988 that he would reduce the Soviet army stationed in the European part of the Soviet Union by some half a million troops was motivated by a desire to relieve the burden of maintaining them, which had become unbearable. At the same time, he wanted to make the West believe that he wanted to become a social democrat and win their support, but above all he wanted to take the initiative from the Americans. Hungary reacted immediately.
On 10 January 1989, Károly Grósz, General Secretary of the MSZMP (Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party), announced the prospect of a partial withdrawal of Soviet troops within weeks, but he also stressed that Hungary would remain a committed member of the Warsaw Pact. The partial withdrawals finally took place between 25 April and 28 May 1989: more than 10,000 troops, 470 tanks, 200 artillery pieces and mortars and 2,900 vehicles of various types were withdrawn from our country.
The reburial of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs took place on June 16, 1989.
The regime hoped that the solemn commemoration of the martyrs of the Revolution would reconcile the victims and perpetrators and that this joint gesture would help to put the past behind them. Both aims were derailed by a speech on behalf of Hungary’s young people delivered by Viktor Orbán. It was a speech that made it impossible for the reburial of the heroes of 1956 to remain an internal affair for the regime. Orbán saw the solemn reburial of the symbolic heroes of 1956 as the final farewell to the Kádár regime and made it clear that when it came to shaping the future, the nation’s anti-communist youth saw no role for those who had crushed the 1956 Revolution or for their successors. The echoes of his speech reached Moscow. The following month, the regime’s leadership suggested to Gorbachev that further Soviet troops should be withdrawn, and that this should be made public in some form. The pace of events was accelerating.
In early February 1990, Hungarian prime minister Miklós Németh and Russian prime minister Nikolai Ryzskov began negotiations on a full withdrawal, which Németh wanted to complete by 30 June 1991. In January 1990, Lieutenant General Antal Annus, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Hungarian Defence Forces, was appointed by Prime Minister Miklós Németh to prepare and carry out the withdrawal of troops. One of the most important parts of this was the negotiated settlement of issues related to property rights and financial matters as the Soviets had demanded a considerable sum of money from Hungary. After lengthy negotiations, however, Hungary was the only country that did not pay the Soviets another indemnity.
Moscow finally granted the original request on 19 June 1991, nearly two weeks before the permanent Soviet withdrawal from Hungary. This meant that, in addition to the troops withdrawn in 1989, a total of 100,380 Soviet citizens left Hungary: 49,700 officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted men; 18,673 civilian employees; and 32,007 family members of professional staff. The last person to cross the Hungarian–Soviet state border – at 15:01 Central European Time on the Tisza Bridge at Záhony – was Lieutenant General Viktor Shilov, the commander of the withdrawal operation.
Hungary had regained the freedom and independence it had lost on 19 March 1944.
Rajmund Fekete (PhD) – director of the Institute for the Research of Communism