BUDAPEST, November 4 — For three decades Hungarians have wondered which neighbour, colleague or relative once filed a report on them. On Wednesday, November 4, Hungary's Historical Archives of the State Security Services (ÁBTL) opens an online database naming roughly 50,000 to 60,000 people linked to the communist-era secret police: the handlers and officers themselves, the recruited informants, and in some cases their targets.
Source: Associated Press via Dagens, November 4
The database, on a website called Nyitottaktak — 'Open Files' — can be searched by name, date and place of birth, mother's name, codename and type of document. Until now, access had been limited to some researchers and the families of victims; starting today, anyone can search and download the list. The material consists of so-called 'agent files' compiled between 1945 and 1989 and kept in the underground vault of the Historical Archives in Budapest.
Source: The Guardian, November 2, via Asia Business Daily
'Such radical disclosures have never happened anywhere before,' Gergő Bendegúz Cseh, director-general of the ÁBTL, told the Associated Press. 'Now we can really understand who were the secret collaborators or informants of the state security.'
Source: Associated Press via Dagens, November 4
A prime minister's pledge, kept on a day of mourning
The release fulfils a campaign pledge by Prime Minister Péter Magyar, whose centre-right Tisza party ended Viktor Orbán's 16 years in power at the April parliamentary election; Orbán's government had kept the archive closed, and parliament passed the disclosure law in September. The date is deliberate: November 4 is Hungary's national day of mourning, the day in 1956 when Soviet forces crushed the student-led uprising that had begun on October 23 — 2,652 people were killed and 19,226 injured, by the figures carried in the reporting. The release was first scheduled for October 22, the eve of the 70th anniversary of the revolution, and was postponed because preparations were delayed. 'Without confronting the past, there can be no genuine political change,' Magyar said ahead of the release, warning the files will be a difficult issue for many families. More than two-thirds of Hungarians back the disclosure, according to polling cited by the government.
Source: Reuters, October 6; The Guardian, November 2
What the files can — and cannot — show
Between 1945 and 1989, Hungary's security apparatus ran an extensive network of agents to watch neighbourhoods, workplaces, churches and student circles; some informants were blackmailed into reporting, others recruited with jobs, apartments or exit visas. Hungary's state news agency MTI estimates about 150,000 people acted as informants in the era — the names of only about a third have been identified, and detailed files survive for just about 9,000 of them, whose fuller 'B dossiers' are scheduled for release on February 25, 2027. Many records were lost when protesters stormed the secret police headquarters during the 1956 revolution, and documents were destroyed again as the regime fell in 1989. Material protected by privacy law — health records, addictions, and information on sexual activity or orientation — is censored under data-protection rules. The archive's director-general has said between 5,000 and 8,000 of those listed may still be alive, of whom 1,000 to 2,000 could still be active — a remark reported here as his assessment, and one reason historians have warned that public figures, clergy and local officials could be identified as past collaborators once the database goes live.
Source: Budapest Times / MTI; Associated Press
What is solid
- The ÁBTL opens the Nyitottaktak database on November 4 naming roughly 50,000 to 60,000 handlers, officers, informants and some targets from 1945–1989, searchable by name, birth details, mother's name, codename and document type
- The release fulfils PM Péter Magyar's election pledge, follows a disclosure law passed in September, and is timed to the 70th anniversary of the Soviet crushing of the 1956 uprising
- MTI estimates ~150,000 informants in total in the era, with identified names for about a third and detailed surviving files for ~9,000; a second phase of ~9,000 B dossiers is set for February 25, 2027
- Sensitive categories (health, addictions, sexual activity/orientation) are censored under data-protection rules
What is only claimed
- How many listed informants are still alive or 'still active' — the director-general's estimate of 5,000–8,000 alive and 1,000–2,000 possibly active is an assessment, not a verified count
- What any single index card proves about a named person — inclusion in the database records a link to the state-security apparatus; the fuller dossiers that would show what a person actually did are not released until February 2027
One of Europe's last closed archives
Hungary is one of the last former Eastern Bloc states to open its secret-police archive: East Germany published the Stasi files in 1992, Poland in 1998, and Romania in 2000. For Punjabi and Indian readers, the parallel is not abstract: families divided by surveillance and informing are a lived memory on both sides of 1947, and the Hungarian argument — that a society cannot rebuild trust while the informers' names stay locked in a basement vault — is the same argument made wherever a state once watched its own people. What Budapest is testing today is whether publishing the names heals that wound or reopens it, family by family.
What happens next: the database itself is the story today — watch for the first identifications of public figures in the files, any legal challenges under privacy law, and whether the February 25, 2027 release of the ~9,000 detailed dossiers goes ahead on schedule. None of those had been reported at publication time.