Hungary to Open Communist-Era Secret Police Files to Public

Hungary will begin releasing tens of thousands of previously restricted Communist-era records that identify people listed by the state security services as officers, informants, collaborators or recruitment targets, the Historical Archives of the State Security Services said on Tuesday.

The release will take place in two phases, starting on Nov. 4. The archive estimates the files contain roughly 50,000 to 60,000 names.

Hungary spent more than four decades under Communist rule before its peaceful transition to democracy in 1990. During that period, a sprawling security apparatus closely monitored citizens and their loyalty to the socialist government. Beyond its established officers and agents, the service recruited private citizens — often through blackmail or other forms of duress — to watch coworkers, friends, neighbours and relatives and report back to handlers.

Until now, the records were available only to close relatives of those named and to researchers. Under the new arrangement, they will be accessible through a searchable online database. Users will be able to request information on security officers, informants or recruitment targets by name, date or place of birth, mother's name, code name, and document type or number.

Some material will be redacted to protect sensitive personal information, including health records, addictions, sexual activity and sexual orientation. Anticipating heavy traffic, the archive has moved the database to external servers to prevent its own systems from being overloaded.

A second wave of releases is scheduled for Feb. 25, when about 9,000 so-called "B dossiers" — files that can run to hundreds of pages each and detail individual recruits or recruitment targets — will be made public.

The archive's director-general, Gergő Bendegúz Cseh, said the question of releasing the files has been contentious since Hungary's democratic transition 36 years ago, largely because publication would likely have implicated serving politicians.

"This is an old debate. Hungarian society has not been able to swallow or spit out this problem since the change of regime," Cseh said.

The move forms part of a push by Hungary's new centre-right government to introduce greater transparency in the workings of the state. Shortly after his Tisza party defeated former leader Viktor Orbán in a landslide election in April, Prime Minister Péter Magyar, 45, said his government would "fulfill one of the most important promises of the democratic transition: we will make the existing records public and searchable."

Cseh said successor governments to dictatorships rarely disclose the names of former agents and informants, let alone records as detailed as those Hungary is preparing to release. "Such radical disclosures have never happened anywhere before," he said. "Now we can really understand who were the secret collaborators or informants of the state security."