Secret police files released in Hungary, 37 years after fall of communism

Hungary has opened communist-era secret police files to the public, in a controversial move the government says will help Hungarian society heal itself from the traumas of 45 years of communist rule.

Critics say it has come too late, that the files themselves are incomplete, and that the move risks sowing division and causing unnecessary anguish to family members.

The date of the opening is symbolic - on 4 November 1956 Soviet tanks rolled through Budapest and other cities, to crush Hungary's short-lived revolution.

"I ask everyone to treat this long overdue publication of documents with dignity and humanity," Prime Minister Péter Magyar told reporters at the state archives in Budapest.

"Many families will now face difficult information, often related to a deceased relative," he added. "It is impossible to process a trauma without discussion and asking questions."

Magyar defended the move, which was a central promise of his election campaign ahead of his landslide victory in April elections, as the fulfilment of a promise made by those who toppled the Communist party in 1989 in Hungary.

A typical entry records the real name of the informer, their codename, date of birth, address and mother's name, their motive for recruitment - whether voluntary or because they were blackmailed or coerced - and the name of their handling officer.

Another batch of files, known as the "B-dossiers" are currently being digitalised, and will be made available on 25 February.

These will offer much more detail about the recruitment process, and the high or low value of the information they provided.

Critics of the opening of the files emphasise this point - that people will be too quick to judge those they find in the files, and unwilling to understand the nuances.

Around 150-160,000 people are estimated to have been recruited as informers between December 1944 and February 1990 in Hungary.

Many were blackmailed, with threats including loss of work or study opportunities, loss of access to medicines, or the leaking of information about their sex lives or addictions. Such intimate details will be carefully edited out of the current disclosures too.

Krisztian Ungváry, a historian who has long campaigned for the full release of the files, says access to information on what is recorded by the state against the citizen is a citizens' right, and should not depend on the whims of those in power.

"In the overwhelming majority of surviving agent reports, it isn't even possible to identify the agent, let alone their motives," counters an opponent of today's move, Zsuzsanna Borvendég, a historian and MEP of the far-right Our Homeland party.

Publishing the names of informers without fully explaining the circumstances of their recruitment and their activities risks misleading the public, she told Hungarian media.