Hungarian Defence Forces and Regime Change in 1989–1990 : International and Domestic Background

József Lajos Németh

doi:10.32565/aarms.2015.3.12

Abstract

The role of the armed forces in the regime change could cover as wide scale of topics as learned in history. In Hungary we experienced a peaceful regime change in 1989–1990. However, many questions were raised about the military role in contemporary events.It is a fact that the Hungarian Defence Forces were affected by many political changes and challenges in the given time period and it is still a controversial question why and how it was possible that it played a stabilizing role.As a first part of a planned paper series, this article seeks to explain some international and domestic events and influencing factors in the period from 1989 to 1990 with the support of the Janos Bolyai Research Scholarship awarded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Highlights

Many questions were raised about the military role in contemporary events
It is a fact that the Hungarian Defence Forces were affected by many political changes and challenges in the given time period and it is still a controversial ques- tion why and how it was possible that it played a stabilizing role
It is well known and history has proven it many times that the military could play a significant role in regime changes

Summary

Introduction

It is well known and history has proven it many times that the military could play (and usu- ally did) a significant role in regime changes. According to the Hungarian historian, Romsics Ignác the Hungarian internal changes can be best described by giving account of how the Kádár regime was losing legitimacy It means that Hungarian society lost trust in kádárism; by the mid-‘80s the social acceptance of the on-going system was shaken, and by the end of that decade it shrunk to a minimum. The changes markedly altered the internal conditions of the state party (Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party – HSWP) and intensified the struggle between different groups This resulted in the “quasi-fall” of the old Kádár János by May 1988, but the emerging of the “reformists”, who had to focus – for the time being – their power on their struggle with the “old ones” (or technocrats). From on the events gathered pace and led to the spring elections in 1990

General Effects and Raised Issues for Further Research

Findings

Conclusions