Hungary publishes communist-era informer names after decades of dispute

Hungary has begun publishing communist-era secret-police files, including the names and personal information of about 60,000 alleged informers, in a move that Prime Minister Péter Magyar says will help society confront the legacy of 45 years of communist rule. The release on Wednesday was timed to coincide with November 4, the date in 1956 when Soviet forces crushed Hungary’s anti-Communist uprising. Magyar’s Tisza party had promised to publish the files if elected, and the government has presented the decision as the fulfilment of a pledge made when the Communist system fell in 1989.

The files became available online through the nyitottaktak.hu website. They include “Form 6” records containing an informer’s real name, codename, date of birth, address, mother’s name, recruitment motive and handling officer, according to the BBC. A further collection, known as the “B-dossiers”, is being digitised and is due to be released on February 25.

Those records are expected to contain more detail about recruitment and the value assigned to information supplied by individual informers. The opening follows 36 years of political disagreement. Hungary allowed people to request their own files from 1998 and permitted historians to examine some records, but names were often blacked out and other documents remained withheld.

Earlier governments, including administrations led by conservatives, Socialists and Fidesz, considered wider disclosure but did not proceed. The material is also incomplete. Documents were destroyed as the Communist Party lost power in 1988 and 1989, while other records were retained or selectively released.

The BBC reported that leaks had repeatedly been used by governments to damage political opponents. The DW account said the existing rules allowed agencies to block transfers to the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security when they cited national-security concerns. The scale of the disclosure is substantial but does not represent every informer.

Estimates put the total number recruited between late 1944 and early 1990 at around 150,000 to 160,000. Many were reportedly coerced through threats involving work, education, medicines or exposure of private information. Magyar urged the public to treat the publication with “dignity and humanity”, warning that families could encounter difficult information about deceased relatives.

Critics argue that names without context may produce misleading conclusions. Archivist Bendeguz Gergo Cseh cautioned that state-security files are not always reliable, while historian János M. Rainer called the disclosure largely symbolic because it came so late.

Historian Krisztian Ungváry welcomed the opportunity for research and public debate.