One of the Soviet military’s most highly-classified bases has been uncovered in the wooded Hungarian countryside near Tótvázsony, in the western part of the country.
The secret bunker had been manned by Soviet soldiers and officials, as well as maintenance people brought in from the Soviet Union. It was known as ‘Little Moscow’ and the locals knew very few details about exactly what was there. The site remained heavily guarded with double barbed wire fencing to stop anyone from getting in.
The site has now been investigated and has revealed two underground bunkers. These bunkers had stored over a hundred nuclear weapons able to reach western Europe should the Soviets have needed to target the democratic countries of the west. The base has been taken over by the Hungarian army, but since it isn’t heavily guarded or restricted, people can get in to look around the site.
During World War Two, Hungary allied with Germany’s Nazi regime and in 1941 joined the Germans to invade the Soviet Union. They made it to Stalingrad, but by 1944 the Red Army had regained lost ground and was pushing the Nazi troops back to its own borders and beyond. Soviet troops captured Budapest in 1945. The Soviets installed a pro-Communist government — even though a democratic election was held, the Soviets ensured that their Communist backers governed the country. In 1949 Hungary became the People’s Republic of Hungary, the Gizmodo reports.
In 1956 the Hungarian people revolted against Communist rule, but the uprising was crushed by the countries of the Warsaw Pact. Hungary, the most western country under Soviet Union rule, was of crucial strategic importance in the nuclear war stand-off. The country was home to thousands of Russian soldiers and had several military bases holding Soviet weaponry and ammunition. Hungarians were used to Red Army soldiers living among them, along with their military vehicles and aircraft.
After the revolution across Eastern Europe in 1989, thousands of Red Army troops returned to Russia along with their equipment and weaponry. In Hungary, they abandoned around 60 army camps and 10 air bases. By 1991, all of the Soviet troops had withdrawn, leaving Hungary to decide its own future.