Despite Hungary’s democratic transition in 1990, efforts to release communist-era archives have repeatedly failed, with critics blaming successive governments’ reluctance to involve public figures from across the political spectrum.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar ended the impasse with a bill in September to grant unrestricted public access to archives for the first time.
“After 36 years, we are finally delivering on what was once one of the key promises of the 1990 regime change – a promise that was later denied and lied to,” Magyar said during a press briefing at the state security archive.
“For decades, restrictions on public access have resulted in political hysteria, blackmail, pressure and silence,” he said.
Public figures included in the register
The names of politicians, clergy and television personalities appeared in the records. But a “large proportion” of the informants were “people who did not make a mark on national public life,” said Bendeguz Gergo Cseh, director of the archives.
The government will set up helplines offering emotional support and counseling to those affected by the revelations.
“After today’s revelation, a large number of families will be faced with information that will be difficult to bear,” Magyar said, asking people to treat the revelation with “dignity and humanity.”
Different types of documents disclosed
Under the law on full disclosure of secret service activities of the previous regime, four types of state security files dating from before 1990 will be made freely accessible to all.
On Wednesday morning, these three became accessible on the site nyitottaktak.hu. (source in Hungarian) website.
“Card 6” is the registration form for a member of the network. It contains the agent’s identification data, including name, place and date of birth, mother’s name and occupation, but also key details of the agent’s activity. Among them, the circumstances and motivations that led them to become an agent and how long they remained members of the network.
A register of recruitments between 1957 and 1962 as well as a database containing the personal data and code names of former agents have also been published. In total, estimates suggest that 50,000 to 60,000 agent names were made public during all of this documentary disclosure.
The public has had free access since Wednesday to this data via a search tool allowing filtering by birth data, by name, place and date of birth, as well as by code name, on all types of records made public.
A second batch of files containing more details on approximately 9,000 informants will be released in February.
Around 150,000 agents during the communist era
Hungary was under one-party communist rule between 1949 and 1989, which suppressed dissent.
Just as in East Germany and other parts of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, authorities used a vast network of informants to monitor public opinion.
Individuals, often recruited under duress, were responsible for denouncing colleagues, friends and even relatives in search of signs of disloyalty towards the regime.
Estimates suggest that the secret police employed around 150,000 agents in total during the four decades of the regimes of Mátyás Rákosi (1952–1953) and János Kádár (1956–1988).
But only about a third of their names are known, and detailed and substantive information exists for only about 10 percent of them. Many documents were lost in 1956 and during the anti-Soviet regime change, and the rest were kept until 1997 in the Ministry of the Interior, until the creation of the ÁBTL’s predecessor, the Historical Bureau.
Cseh Gergő Bendegúz, director general of the Historical Archives of the State Security Services (ÁBTL), told the Hungarian news agency MTI that there are around ten thousand files, comprising in total several hundred thousand pages.
Responding to a question about the reliability and completeness of the documents, Cseh Gergő Bendegúz emphasized that the contents of the state security files are not necessarily true in all cases and are certainly very incomplete.
“Better late than never”
Debates over the opening of archives have animated Hungarian politics since the fall of communism. In 2002, weeks after becoming prime minister, socialist politician Peter Medgyessy found himself embroiled in scandal after it was revealed that he had worked as a secret agent during the communist era.
The case sparked renewed calls for transparency, and parliament passed a law in 2003 that lets those under surveillance know who reported them.
It was “better late than never,” said historian Laszlo Eorsi of the 1956 Institute Foundation.
“We have access to a lot more information than before about who the authorities recruited and how the security apparatus worked at the time,” he said.
But historians have cautioned against judging anyone simply because their name is on the list of informants.
“I know of many examples where someone was recruited, but did not report, but actually took a huge risk by turning against the authorities. Some could even be considered real heroes,” Eorsi pointed out.
Gn world
