Hungary opens communist-era informer files in belated reckoning with Cold War past
The searchable archive lists about 50,000 to 60,000 names and will add more detailed files in February, officials said.
- Hungary begins releasing tens of thousands of Communist-era police files in an online database today, enabling public searches of informers and collaborators. Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed state security services attempted to recruit him during military service, though he refused.
- Orban, whose 16-year nationalist rule ended in April, stated documents revealed that "informants were set upon us, and listening devices were installed in our workplaces, our homes — and even in our bedrooms." Prime Minister Peter Magyar pledged to open the archives.
- Investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi reported that former Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh claimed he was shown three handwritten intelligence reports allegedly authored by Orban in 1990 by Defence Minister Ferenc Kárpáti, though Németh could not independently verify authenticity.
- Historian Krisztián Ungváry cautioned against drawing conclusions, stressing that while Orban may have carried out intelligence tasks, available evidence suggests he was primarily a surveillance target. Files also indicate failed recruitment attempts in 1982 and 1988 under codename "Kurázsi."
- The online database allows citizens to search records of approximately 55,000 secret collaborators recorded between 1956 and 1989. Previously restricted to researchers and family members, the archives now enable Hungarians to confront their totalitarian past directly.
218 Articles
218 Articles
Intelligence Service Recruited Spies with Blackmail and Threats. Now Hungary Is Revealing Secret Cold War Documents.
András Patyi, judge of the Constitutional Court; Katalin Karikó, Nobel of Medicine; Laszlo Kiss-Rigó, Catholic bishop, are some of the nearly 60,000 names, with their corresponding key appearances , which appear in the files of informers of the apolitical police, in Communist Hungary between 1945 and 1990 which, now, has just made public the Government of Budapest. Almost none of them were voluntarily. Along with their files appear the recruitme…
Viktor Orban, former Hungarian prime minister, is accused of collaborating with the Hungarian secret services while he satisfied his military internship, while he denies and says that his refusal to cooperate caused him to be placed under continuous surveillance. Viktor Orban, accused of collaborating with "Hungarian security during the communist period. Former Hungarian prime minister would have denounced his colleagues during military service,…
Hungary opens for the first time the secret archives of its communist spy police. The video shows what the files on Viktor Orban really reveal.
According to the VSquare investigation site, in 1990, on the eve of the first free elections, he received three documents from the Minister of Defense where the future autocrat denounced his comrades to the regime and reported their religious, sexual and political orientations.
Orban could be a KGB informant, and his denunciations probably lie in Moscow - the investigation Ex-Prime Minister Miklos Nemet said three handwritten reports for the special services of the Hungarian People's Republic, allegedly signed by <p>Orban</p>.
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