Hungary opens communist-era secret police files, then admits a wrongly listed former deputy speaker

Archive goes online

Hungary's government opened the files of the communist-era secret police to the public on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, from 10:00 local time. The portal of the State Security Services Historical Archive (Abtl) offers files, index cards, registers and magnetic tapes, and lets people search for their own ancestors. Prime Minister Peter Magyar, who is 45, said the release fulfilled one of the core promises of the 1990 change of regime, a promise he said had later been abandoned. The timing matched the 70th anniversary of the Soviet suppression of the 1956 uprising. Magyar had made the release a pledge of his campaign before the April legislative elections, which he won against Viktor Orbán, and on 31 October he announced on Facebook that the files would be published on 4 November.

The database holds the names and files of between 50,000 and 60,000 former informants. Some of the names listed are not necessarily informants, since in some cases they are persons of interest to the regime. A second series with more detail on about 9,000 of these informants is due by 25 February 2027, after certain information, including sexual orientation, is removed. The archive director, Bendeguz Gergo Cseh, said many files from the late 1970s and the 1980s are incomplete because those people were still active during the transition to democracy.

A listing error and an apology

By Thursday, 5 November, the error had surfaced. Sándor Lezsák, a former deputy speaker of parliament, co-founder of the Hungarian Democratic Forum and a long-serving Fidesz MP, appeared in the database as a collaborator. Lezsák protested that he had been under surveillance by the communist services and had never worked for them. The ABTL said his name had been posted online by mistake, because his file records him as a person under surveillance. Magyar apologised on Facebook on Thursday, writing that he had not been able to reach Lezsák by phone before the listing became public. Cseh accepted responsibility in a television interview, explaining that agent files often include surveilled people and that some of them were moved by accident into the public database. He said Lezsák's entry has been removed and that checks on the remaining names are continuing.

Political fallout

Fidesz responded sharply. Its parliamentary group leader, János Bóka, called for the website to be closed until it is clear who was an informant and who was only a victim of surveillance. He also demanded the dismissal of Culture Minister Zoltán Tarr, who oversees the ABTL. Tarr hoped the release would make long-term reconciliation possible by bringing past secrets into the open. His father appears in the documents, but official confirmation says he was never an agent. Former prime minister Viktor Orbán, who had been the subject of rumours about ties to the secret police, said in a statement issued on Tuesday, 3 November, that he refused to cooperate when he was approached at the start of his compulsory military service. He added that he, his wife and his colleagues had been under constant surveillance and targeted by the party-state's secret investigations. Magyar urged citizens to handle the documents with dignity and humanity, warning that many families will face hard information about their own history.

What the files show

Cseh said most informants were probably people with no public profile, such as tractor drivers, bar owners or weavers, although some public figures, including politicians, clergy and television personalities, are identified in the register. The government plans to set up helplines offering psychological support to people affected by the revelations. The background is a Soviet invasion on 4 November 1956 that crushed the anticommunist uprising, followed by decades of dictatorship. A partial release came in the 1990s, when parliament passed the 1994 agents law requiring checks on government members, lawmakers and certain civil servants. Citizens could consult their own files from 1997, and the permissions were widened in 2003. According to the Telex portal, Fidesz deputies voted more than 30 times against opening the archives after 2010, and the first post-communist prime minister, the conservative Jozsef Antall, had rejected the idea.

Database, lower figure50,000

Database, upper figure60,000

Second series, fuller files9,000

Database, lower figure

50000 people

Database, upper figure

60000 people

Second series, fuller files

9000 people

Data from the article text