Hungary Opens Communist-Era Secret Police Files to the Public

Hungary has opened its communist-era secret police files to the public, and the names and personal data of around 60,000 people recruited by those services are now available online. Prime Minister Péter Magyar presented the release at the state archives in Budapest on 4 November. The date is symbolic: on 4 November 1956, Soviet tanks rolled through Budapest to crush Hungary's revolution.

Opening the files was a central promise of Magyar's election campaign, which preceded his landslide victory in April. The names and data were published on the nyitottaktak.hu website, according to the BBC.

The scale of the archive is large. Around 150,000 to 160,000 people are estimated to have been recruited as informers, meaning people who secretly passed information to the services, between December 1944 and February 1990. Since 1998, Hungarians have been able to apply for their own secret police file, and historians have been able to research the files of others. Many names were blacked out in those earlier releases, however, and many files were withheld.

In early October, Reuters reported that Hungary would begin releasing tens of thousands of the files in an online public database. A second batch, known as the "B-dossiers", is due to be made available on 25 February.

Critics of the opening say it has come too late, that the files are incomplete, and that the move risks sowing division and causing anguish to family members. Deutsche Welle reported on the release, which identifies informants.

Former prime minister Viktor Orban has said that he rebuffed recruitment by the secret police, according to Reuters.