Secret police files released in Hungary, 37 years after fall of communism

ByNick Thorpe in Budapest.

Key points

• Around 150-160, 000 individuals are estimated to have been recruited as informers between December 1944 and February 1990 in Hungary.
• The date of the opening is symbolic – on 4 November 1956 Soviet tanks rolled through Budapest and other cities, to crush Hungary's short-lived revolution.
• From Wednesday, the names and personal data of around 60, 000 individuals recruited by the communist-era secret services have become available on the nyitottaktak.hu website, external.
• Since 1998, it has been feasible to apply for your own file, and for historians to research those of others.
• Another batch of files, known as the "B-dossiers" are at present being digitalised, and will be produced available on 25 February.

Hungary has opened communist-era secret police files to the public, in a controversial move the administration states will support Hungarian society heal itself from the traumas of 45 years of communist rule.

Critics say the move comes too late, that the files themselves are incomplete, and that the move risks sowing division and causing unnecessary anguish to family members.

For context, the date of the opening is symbolic – on 4 November 1956 Soviet tanks rolled through Budapest and other cities, to crush Hungary's short-lived revolution.

"I ask everyone to treat this long overdue publication of documents with dignity and humanity, " Prime Minister Péter Magyar remarked to journalists at the state archives in Budapest.

"Many families will now face difficult information, often related to a deceased relative, " he continued. "It is impossible to process a trauma without discussion and asking questions."

As the fulfilment of a promise created by those who toppled the Communist party in 1989 in Hungary, magyar defended the move, which was a central promise of his election campaign ahead of his landslide victory in April elections. How the downfall of Serbia's Vučiċ mirrored that of Hungary's Orbán. Hungarian MPs scrap Orbán's anti-LGBTQ measures.

In the ensuing decades, conservative, Socialist-Liberal, and Fidesz-led governments have all contemplated, but ultimately refused to open the files.

Since 1998, it has been feasible to apply for your own file, and for historians to research those of others. But plenty of names were blacked out, and numerous files withheld by the post-communist secret services for their own employ.

As successive governments tried to damage their opponents, over the past 36 years, there were frequent leaks of data from the files. As the Communist party lost its grip in 1988-89, plenty of files were additionally shredded.

In practice, a typical entry records the real name of the informer, their codename, date of birth, address and mother's name, their motive for recruitment – whether voluntary or since they were blackmailed or coerced – and the name of their handling officer.

These will offer much more detail regarding the recruitment process, and the high or low value of the information they provided.

Critics of the opening of the files emphasise this point – that individuals will be too quick to judge those they find in the files, and unwilling to understand the nuances.

Plenty of were blackmailed, with threats including loss of work or study opportunities, loss of access to medicines, or the leaking of information concerning their sex lives or addictions. Such intimate details will be carefully edited out of the current disclosures too.

Krisztian Ungváry, a historian who has long campaigned for full public access to the files, notes access to information on what is recorded by the state against the citizen is a citizens' right, and should not depend on the whims of those in power.

"In the overwhelming majority of surviving agent reports, it isn't even possible to identify the agent, let alone their motives, " counters an opponent of today's move, Zsuzsanna Borvendég, a historian and MEP of the far-right Our Homeland party.

Publishing the names of informers without fully explaining the circumstances of their recruitment and their activities risks misleading the public, she informed Hungarian media.

Taken together, the developments around secret police files released in Hungary, 37 years after fall of communism point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.