Hungary will publish the names of tens of thousands of people who collaborated with the country’s communist-era security services, in a major effort to confront its past and restore public trust in state institutions.
According to The Guardian, the new Hungarian government will launch an online database on Wednesday, allowing citizens to search for people recorded as informants for the secret police between 1945 and 1989.
During communist rule, Hungary’s state security services relied on an extensive network of informants to monitor society and suppress political opposition.
Some were forced or blackmailed into reporting on neighbors, friends, colleagues and even family members, while others were recruited in exchange for favors or other benefits.
For decades, the so-called “agent files” remained largely inaccessible to the public, preserved in historical archives of the former state security services.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar promised during his campaign ahead of the April parliamentary elections to make the files public. In September, the government approved legislation paving the way for their release. According to polls cited by The Guardian, the move was supported by more than two-thirds of Hungarians.
“A democratic society has the right to know its past,” said Zoltán Tarr, Minister for Social Relations and Culture.
Until now, access to the documents had been largely restricted to researchers and relatives of victims. The new database is expected to make Hungary one of the most transparent former Eastern Bloc countries in terms of access to communist-era secret service records.
István Papp, a historian and head of the academic department of the archives, compared the release of the files to opening a door that had remained only partially open for decades.
Historians estimate that the documents contain the names of between 50,000 and 60,000 people, around 10 percent of whom are believed to still be alive.
However, the publication is also expected to reopen painful personal and family histories.
“As a historian, I support publication. But on a personal level, I feel sorry for those who will confront their family history for the first time,” Papp said.
Miklós Kiss, a survivor of a Hungarian forced labor camp and head of a victims’ association, said the files should have been opened much earlier.
“People will discover that there were traitors in every family, in every neighborhood and on every street,” he said.
Hungary is among the last countries in Eastern Europe to make this part of its communist-era archives broadly accessible. East Germany opened the Stasi files in 1992, the Czech Republic followed in 2003, and Latvia published informant records in 2018.
Incomplete archives and further disclosures expected
Hungary’s archives are nevertheless incomplete. Many documents were destroyed during the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, while others disappeared during the transition away from communism in 1989.
Although records mention approximately 60,000 people, detailed files exist for only around 9,000. These are expected to be published in February, after sensitive information concerning health, addictions, sexuality and details about victims has been removed.
The decision by Hungary’s new government is likely to prompt a wider debate about individual responsibility, collaboration with the communist regime and how societies confront difficult chapters of their history.
