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Hungary Government and Party Control
Ultimate responsibility for defense policy lay with the
HSWP
Politburo
(see Party Structure
, ch. 4). The party
exercised
several channels of control over the armed forces. The
party
officially controlled the army through the Government
Administration and Administration Department of the
Secretariat.
The head of the Ministry of Defense's Main Political
Administration reported to this party body and to the
minister of
defense. The Main Political Administration, in turn,
controlled
the political departments at the division level and the
political
deputies of the commanding officers at the subdivision
level.
Party cells were subordinated to the deputy commanders for
political affairs. The Army Committee of the Central
Committee of
the HSWP supervised overall political work in the army.
During peacetime the Presidential Council, whose
members were
subject to the HSWP's
nomenklatura (see Glossary)
authority, oversaw national defense; the defense committee
of the National Assembly also worked closely with the
Presidential Council
(see State Apparatus
, ch. 4). At the government level,
the Council of Ministers' Committee of Defense supervised
the defense committees of Budapest and those of the counties.
The minister of defense was a member of the defense committees
of both the Council of Ministers and the National Assembly in
peacetime. During wartime, the president would transform
the Presidential Council into the National Defense Council,
with the
minister of defense leading the war effort.
In theory the Presidential Council appointed and
dismissed
officers, but in fact this responsibility was assumed by
the
minister of defense. The minister of defense had always
been a
member of the Central Committee of the HSWP, the highest
ranking
officer, and the commander in chief of the armed forces.
He
reported to the chairman of the Council of Ministers and
to the
HSWP Politburo in peacetime. In late 1989, Hungary's
minister of
defense was Colonel General Ferenc Karpati, who was
appointed in
December 1985 upon the death of his predecessor, Colonel
General
Istvan Olah. Karpati had joined the Hungarian Communist
Party in
1945 at age nineteen. His chief of staff was Lieutenant
General
Jozsef Pacsek. At the same time, Brigadier General Istvan
Bracsok
served as secretary of the HSWP's People's Army Committee,
while
Lajos Krasznai served as chief of the HPA's Main Political
Administration.
Party membership was essential for career advancement
in the
military; hence, party membership among officers was high;
according to Karpati it was 80 percent in 1989. This high
level
of party membership among officers was another means of
party
control over the military. The party began recruiting
prospective
officers in the military academies, where students
underwent a
screening process to assess their political reliability.
By contrast, party membership among enlisted men and
noncommissioned officers (NCOs) was relatively low.
Estimates
placed party membership at 0.5 to 0.8 percent of those
persons
drafted, compared with about 4 percent for the general
population
of the same age. In the late 1980s, however, party
membership was
seriously declining, and it can safely be assumed that the
percentage of HSWP members among the military rank and
file was
dropping as well.
Data as of September 1989
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