Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
For three decades Hungarians have wondered which neighbor, colleague or relative once filed a report on them.
On Wednesday, November 4, Hungary’s Historical Archives of the State Security Services (ÁBTL) opens an online database naming roughly 50,000 to 60,000 people linked to the communist-era secret police: the handlers and officers themselves, the recruited informants, and in some cases their targets.
The release is timed to the 70th anniversary of the Soviet crushing of the 1956 uprising. The database can be searched by name, date and place of birth, mother’s name, codename, and type of document. Until now, only researchers and the people named in a file, or their close relatives, could request access.
“Such radical disclosures have never happened anywhere before,” Gergo Bendegúz Cseh, director-general of the ÁBTL, told the Associated Press. “Now we can really understand who were the secret collaborators or informants of the state security.”
A promise from the Tisza party
The release fulfills a campaign pledge by Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose center-right Tisza party ended Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power at the April parliamentary election. Orbán’s government had kept the archive closed; Magyar’s team pushed the enabling legislation through in July.
More than two-thirds of Hungarians back the disclosure, according to polling cited by the government. Historians have warned that public figures, clergy and local officials could be identified as past collaborators once the database goes live.
The scale of surveillance
Between 1945 and 1989, Hungary’s security apparatus ran an extensive network of agents to watch neighborhoods, workplaces, churches and student circles. Some informants were blackmailed into reporting; others were recruited with jobs, apartments or exit visas.
Many files were destroyed during the 1956 uprising and again as the regime fell in 1989, leaving Hungary’s archive smaller than those of Poland or Romania. Health records, information on addictions, and material on sexual activity or orientation will be censored under data-protection rules.
A late reckoning in the region
Hungary is one of the last former Eastern Bloc states to open its secret-police archive. East Germany published the Stasi files in 1992, Poland in 1998, and Romania in 2000.
“Without confronting the past, there can be no genuine political change,” Magyar said ahead of the release, according to CiberCuba, warning that the files will be a difficult issue for many families.
A second phase, roughly 9,000 so-called “B dossiers” that can run hundreds of pages each, is scheduled for release on February 25, 2027.
