Hungary releases names of 60,000 communist-era secret police recruits

Hungary has published the names and personal details of about 60,000 people recruited by the communist-era secret services, fulfilling a campaign promise by Prime Minister Péter Magyar but reviving concerns that incomplete records could unfairly damage reputations and distress families.

The records went online on Wednesday, 4 November, a date marking the 70th anniversary of Soviet tanks crushing Hungary’s 1956 revolution. Magyar said the release was intended to help the country confront the trauma of decades of communist rule. He urged people to treat the documents “with dignity and humanity”.

The files currently released are Form 6 cards. They include an informer’s real name, codename, date of birth, address, mother’s name, stated reason for recruitment and the name of their handling officer. A further set of records, known as B-dossiers, is due to be published on 25 February and is expected to provide more detail about recruitment and the value assigned to the information supplied.

The disclosure follows decades in which successive governments considered opening the archives but did not do so. Since 1998, individuals have been able to request their own files and historians have been able to research others, but names were often obscured and some documents withheld. Other files were shredded as the Communist party lost power in 1988-89, while information from the archives has also been leaked during political disputes.

Historians estimate that 150,000 to 160,000 people were recruited as informers between December 1944 and February 1990. Some were coerced, with threats including losing work or study opportunities, access to medicine, or exposure of private information. Intimate details are being removed from the current release.

Historian Krisztian Ungváry, who has campaigned for full access to the files, argues that citizens have a right to see what the state recorded about them. But historian and MEP Zsuzsanna Borvendég warned that names alone could mislead: in most surviving agent reports, she said, it is not possible to identify the informer or establish their motives. Critics also fear the publication could cause unnecessary anguish to relatives.