Soviet Tanks Exit Hungary in Start of Partial Pullout

Thirty-one Soviet tanks rolled out of Hungary aboard trains Tuesday in the first phase of the Kremlin’s promised partial withdrawal of Soviet forces from Eastern Europe.

The T-64 tanks, their caterpillar tracks clamped to flat railroad cars and their gun barrels plugged and tethered with steel rope, were the first of 5,000 tanks due to leave Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia by 1991 under plans announced by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in New York in December.

“It is the historic moment in our politics,” Col. Boris Adamenko, deputy chief of staff of the Soviet Southern Army Group, told more than 100 journalists brought from Budapest, 100 miles to the northwest, to witness the departure.

The tanks belong to the 13th Tank Division, which arrived in Kiskunhalas after the 1956 Hungarian uprising that was put down by Soviet forces.

The 10 drivers and eight guards accompanying the tanks were the first of 10,000 troops due to leave Hungary, Moscow’s smallest Warsaw Pact ally. About 40,000 more will begin leaving Czechoslovakia and East Germany next month under the Soviet plan.

Officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization maintain that the planned pullout of all the troops and equipment would still leave the Soviet Union with a clear numerical superiority over NATO conventional forces.

One thousand soldiers from a regiment in the tank division will begin leaving for home on May 15.

Details of the departure of Soviet forces from Hungary, where about 65,000 Soviet troops have been stationed since 1956, were announced in Budapest last Friday by the Southern Army Group’s commander, Col.-Gen. Matvei Burlakov.

Personnel and arms from a tank training regiment will begin leaving June 5, followed by those of an air defense regiment June 20.

The fighter plane regiment at Tokol, south of Budapest, is due to be dismantled by Dec. 1.