Hungary Opens Communist-Era Informer Archives After 36 Years

Hungary has published an online database of documents about people linked to communist-era secret services. Now, anyone can search it for familiar names. Prime Minister Péter Magyar warned that many families would learn painful truths about their loved ones, Reuters writes.

The database was opened on November 4th — more than 36 years after the fall of the communist regime. According to Magyar, about 60,000 names have been published. The documents reveal the network of informers through which the secret police monitored citizens for decades.

Previously, researchers had access to the archives, and ordinary people could primarily view files about themselves or close relatives. Now, anyone interested can search for names in the database.

Magyar urged people to treat the published information with dignity and humanity. He noted that for many, this would be difficult information, often concerning an already deceased relative.

"It is impossible to overcome trauma without discussion and questions," the Prime Minister said.

During the Cold War years, the secret services of Eastern European countries recruited ordinary citizens for cooperation. Some were forced by threats and blackmail, while others were offered rewards. People reported on their colleagues, neighbors, friends, and even relatives.

According to estimates by specialists at the State Security Archive, the secret services used a total of 150,000 informers over four decades, but documents only survived for approximately one-third of them.

Additional materials are planned to be uploaded by February 2027. However, the archive will not provide a completely full picture: some documents were destroyed during the 1956 anti-Soviet uprising, and others in 1988–1989, on the eve of the regime's fall.

It is assumed that some of the documents were taken to Moscow.

The opening of the archives was an election promise by Magyar. Previous Hungarian governments had postponed the full publication of these materials for decades due to a lack of political will.

Earlier, there were rumors that Orbán was also an informer, but his name was not found in the archives. Viktor Orbán himself stated that the communist secret services tried to recruit him during his military service. According to Orbán, he refused, after which he himself became an object of close police surveillance.

The date for the publication of the communist secret service archives was chosen symbolically: November 4th is a day of national mourning in Hungary. On this day in 1956, Soviet troops began a large-scale suppression of the Hungarian uprising.

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