Hungary discloses records of the Communist era that reveal state agents

O a country, which made a peaceful transition to democracy in 1990, while the Soviet Union collapsed, was over four decades under communist rule; at that time, a vast state security apparatus closely monitored the citizens and their loyalty to the socialist government.

This security service, in addition to its agents and effective guardians, recruited ordinary citizens, often through blackmail or other forms of coercion, to monitor co-workers, friends, neighbors and family members, and to report them to their supervisors.

The soon release of the records — which, according to the Historical Archives of State Security Services, will take place in two phases from November 4, is part of an initiative of the new Hungarian centre-right government to introduce more transparency into the functioning of the State.

After a press conference today held in the archive, the general director of the institution, Gergő Bendegúz Cseh, told the American news agency The Associated Press (AP), that the issue of disclosure of records has been controversial since the democratic transition of Hungary 36 years ago, largely according to him, because disclosure would probably compromise politicians on the asset.

“ This is an old issue. Hungarian society has not managed to digest or devalue this problem since the regime change,” Cseh said.

However, shortly after his party, Tisza, defeated the outgoing Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, in an overwhelming electoral victory in April, the 45-year-old Prime Minister Péter Magyar said that his new government “would fulfill one of the most important promises of the democratic transition: to make the existing records public and accessible”.

So far, only accessible to researchers and relatives close to the people mentioned, the files, which, according to the body's estimates, contain between 50,000 and 60,000 names, will be available through an online database in which research can be conducted.

Users may request information on security agents, informants or recruitment targets based on the name, date or place of birth, mother's name, code name and type or document number.

Some documents will have omitted excerpts to protect sensitive personal information, including health records, dependencies, sexual activity and sexual orientation.

Predicting a high volume of accesses to the site, the file transferred the database to external servers to avoid overloading its own systems.

A second phase of disclosure is scheduled for February 25 next year, when around 9,000 “Dossiers B” will be made public, files that can reach hundreds of pages, with details on each recruit or recruitment target.

According to the archive director, governments succeeding dictatorships rarely reveal the names of former agents and informants, much less detailed records as those that Hungary is preparing to disclose.

“ Such radical disclosures have never occurred anywhere before: now we can really know who were the secret collaborators or informers of state security ", said Cseh.