Hungary publishes 60,000 secret police files

Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s government released the archives of Hungary’s former secret police on Wednesday. The databases are now available online and contain the names of individuals who worked as informants for the state security service. This move fulfills a campaign promise made by Magyar and his Tisza party.

The release covers up to 60,000 names out of an estimated 150,000 people who served as informants. Additional databases will follow. They include records of individuals recruited to work for the Hungarian state security agency. The government also scaled back confidentiality provisions found in the previous agent law. This change allows access to a larger volume of documents.

The decision comes 36 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Prior to this release, citizens could only view their own files. They could not see the names of other informants. A 1994 law required background checks for government officials and members of parliament. However, it did not mandate the public release of the full agent files.

Opposition to the release has been long-standing. Jozsef Antall, Hungary’s first post-Communist prime minister, rejected the idea. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party voted against plans to open the files more than 30 times since 2010. The party argued that releasing the documents would compromise national security or allow for political exploitation.

The Hungarian parliament amended the relevant law in mid-September. Magyar noted on Facebook that Fidesz did not support the motion. The Prime Minister linked the decision to a broader reckoning with the past. He specifically referenced the roles of prominent Fidesz figures in the former regime.

Jozsef Horvath is one such figure. He worked as a full-time employee in the department of state security responsible for suppressing domestic opposition. Under Orban, Horvath served as an intelligence officer and security advisor. In 2024, he became the research director of the Sovereignty Protection Office. That agency identified individuals it labeled as foreign agents.

Bendeguz Gergo Cseh, the director of the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security, advised caution. He stated that the state security agencies and their files were not always fully reliable. Many documents were incomplete, and some files had been destroyed. Cseh told reporters that one cannot believe everything the agencies claimed.

Janos M. Rainer, a historian specializing in Hungary’s dictatorship, described the release as a symbolic gesture. He argued that publishing the files would have been more useful immediately after the regime fell. Krisztian Ungvary, another historian who has researched the files, welcomed the move. He said the publication will allow for new research and fresh societal debates.

Ungvary noted that societal lies lead to a strained relationship with politics. He argued that Hungary paid the price for that strain with 16 years of Fidesz rule. The release of the data aims to change that dynamic by providing primary source material to researchers and the public.

The online databases are accessible to all Hungarian citizens. The government plans to add more records in the coming months. The process marks the end of a selective release system that had persisted since the 1990s.