Hungary Opens Communist-Era Secret Police Files, Sparking Debate Over Healing and Harm

On Wednesday, 4 November, Prime Minister Péter Magyar stood before reporters at the state archives in Budapest and announced that Hungary's communist-era secret police files were being opened to the public. The date was chosen deliberately. On 4 November 1956, Soviet tanks rolled through Budapest and other cities to crush the country's short-lived revolution.

From Wednesday, the names and personal data of around 60,000 people recruited by the communist-era secret services are available on a website, nyitottaktak.hu. A typical entry gives the informer's real name, codename, date of birth, address and mother's name. It also records the motive for recruitment, whether voluntary or the result of blackmail or coercion, and the name of the officer who handled them.

Magyar's government says the release will help Hungarian society heal from 45 years of communist rule. Opening the files was a central promise of the campaign that carried him to a landslide victory in April's elections. He framed it as the fulfilment of a promise made by those who toppled the Communist party in 1989. "I ask everyone to treat this long overdue publication of documents with dignity and humanity," he said. He also warned that many families will now face difficult information, often about a deceased relative, and argued that it is impossible to process a trauma without discussion and asking questions.

The path to this point was long. In the decades since 1989, conservative, Socialist-Liberal and Fidesz-led governments all contemplated opening the files and ultimately declined. Since 1998 individuals have been able to apply for their own file, and historians have been able to research those of others. But many names were blacked out, and the post-communist secret services held back many files for their own use. Over 36 years, data leaked repeatedly as successive governments tried to damage opponents, and many files were shredded as the Communist party lost its grip in 1988 and 1989.

A second batch, known as the B-dossiers, is being digitalised and is due on 25 February. These will give far more detail about how people were recruited and whether the information they supplied was of high or low value. Critics say this is exactly the missing context: without it, people will be quick to judge those they find in the files and unwilling to grasp the nuances.

The scale of recruitment explains the concern. An estimated 150,000 to 160,000 people were recruited as informers between December 1944 and February 1990. Many were blackmailed with threats such as losing a job or a place to study, losing access to medicines, or having details of their sex lives or addictions exposed. Such intimate details will be carefully edited out of the current disclosures.

The opposition to the move comes from more than one direction. Critics argue it is too late, that the files are incomplete, and that it risks sowing division and causing unnecessary anguish to relatives. Zsuzsanna Borvendég, a historian and MEP for the far-right Our Homeland party, told Hungarian media that in the overwhelming majority of surviving agent reports it is not even possible to identify the agent, let alone their motives. Publishing names without explaining recruitment and activities, she argued, risks misleading the public.

Krisztian Ungváry, a historian who has long campaigned for full access, takes the opposite view. He says that knowing what the state recorded about its citizens is a citizens' right and should not depend on the whims of those in power.

The next test comes on 25 February, when the B-dossiers will show whether fuller detail softens the judgments now being made.