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Hungary Conscript Programs
Call-up consisted of three steps: obligatory
premilitary
training from January 1 of the year in which the future
draftee
turned seventeen; military registration at the District
Military
Replacement Center, where the registree received a medical
examination and, if disabilities were found, was obliged
to
correct those disabilities capable of correction and
continue
premilitary training; and recruitment, at which time
questions of
medical fitness and service branch and unit assignment
were
resolved. Recruits underwent basic training for four
weeks, then
took the oath of allegiance. This process was followed by
six
months of specialized training for whatever task the
recruits
were to perform. They were then assigned to units. During
all
this time, the recruits also underwent ideological
training.
Through political indoctrination, the military aimed at
inculcating soldiers with a Marxist-Leninist worldview
that would
enable them to accept party positions and the way these
positions
related to internal and external events. Soldiers were
taught the
need for discipline, self-sacrifice, and loyalty to party,
country, and the socialist alliance (including the Soviet
Union)
and were inculcated with a consciousness of their own
invincibility. In fact, the HPA required that only 10
percent of
a conscript's training time during the first phase of
basic
training be devoted to strictly political topics, while 70
percent was spent on military subjects. These relative
proportions demonstrated that the HPA leadership viewed
political
indoctrination as secondary to teaching basic soldiering
to
recruits and persuading the brighter among them to seek a
professional military career. Those who showed both desire
and
ability were given twenty-eight hours of free time each
week to
prepare to enter university. The HPA also awarded
scholarships to
some recruits to attend university full time during their
service
time, plus another twenty-four days of additional annual
leave
and considerably increased pay and benefits.
The combat training for recruits resembled that of
other
Warsaw Pact countries. Soldiers were taught proficiency
with
weapons, weapon systems, battlefield tactics, endurance,
and
stress prevention. Tactical exercises and maneuvers were
often
undertaken with Soviet forces in the country. Battle areas
in
such exercises could be twenty-six to thirty-two
kilometers deep,
and nuclear strikes were simulated. Soldiers sometimes
were
electronically monitored for stress.
Housing provided to conscripts was of poor quality. In
December 1988, Minister of Defense Ferenc Karpati admitted
that
10 percent of the barracks were not fit for habitation
because
they did not have regular hot water service. In general,
most
barracks were sixty to eighty years old and badly needed
new
wiring and plumbing.
Material deprivation aside, most conscripts considered
their
military training inadequate. As well as spending time in
political indoctrination courses, conscripts were obliged
to
perform a great deal of work in the labor-starved economy
(see Labor Force
, ch. 3). For example, in 1987 soldiers worked
32,000
man-days in agriculture. Many conscripts, even those
assigned to
border guard duty, regarded military service as a waste of
time.
Data as of September 1989
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