As a hungarian: agent would imply a member of the secret police which have already been released years ago. These are informants, regular people like students and teachers to members of the churches to actors and musicians etc.
Also
1, this should have been released long ago cause many of these people are already dead.
2, they only released the official record of the informant. Their background, who contacted them (from the secret police), when they were approached etc. But there is nothing about actual reports, like _did they do anything at all_ or not.
Even the Nobel Prize winner (2023) Karikó Katalin has a record on her yet she already wrote her autobiography years ago mentioning this, how and when she was approached and she didn't report anything at all. Now everyone have to decide on their own what to believe or not.
As far as I understand they released different kind of documents, and some of them might be agents’. But at this point I don’t think it is feasible to accurately differentiate who was agent and who only an informant.
> Now everyone have to decide on their own what to believe or not.
I decide to believe that communism doesn't look like a nice system and I decide to believe that I really don't believe those saying: "this time we'll make communism work".
>As a hungarian: agent would imply a member of the secret police which have already been released years ago. These are informants, regular people like students and teachers to members of the churches to actors and musicians etc.
Yes and? That they did it for free instead of for pay is supposed to make it better?
Agents vs informants is a venn diagram. Some informants become active participants under orders of an intelligence officer, they are instructed to use their access for further tasks. Some agents infiltrate groups and inform their handler on group activities and membership. Not all agents inform (they may perform things like sabotage or murder) and not all informants are instructed to do anything (they are paid and never contacted again).
The difference is not really clear in reality and can get blurry quickly. Informants can also be ordered to do more active things to get information - or spread missinformation, or be ordered to do other active things. Simple things like luring a person to a party, or using their influence of position to prevent or make something happen (punish/promote a student/worker, make a certain result go away, ..).
So the majority were likely passive informants with the job of writing reports, but not all of them. And to me it rather would matter if they took the job voluntarily or were forced to do it.
Informants are often compensated in a variety of ways. Maybe you get some cash or maybe you avoid arrest or torture in exchange for giving up someone else. Or maybe becoming an informant was a criteria for government sponsorship in academics or sports or to keep their position in a high profile career. Although some informants just do it for ego or ideological reasons. Is your neighbor annoying you with their late night clandestine meetings? Rat them out! It's unfortunate that these records don't include reasons as to why someone became an informant and what information they actually contributed, if any.
And in Russia itself it turned out to be one of the biggest subversions: in August 1991, Yeltsin famously and inexplicably stopped his followers on their way to the KGB building where all the archives were stored. [1]
One thing I noticed is that Eastern Europe is always quick to blame the Soviets for their communist dictatorships conveniently forgetting the millions of "fellow travellers" along the way.
Hungary had a revolution against Soviet control that was brutally suppressed and hundreds of thousands of people fled or were exiled. So yes, the Soviets were absolutely responsible for their communist dictatorship because they killed or removed anyone that did not comply
I don't know why the ignorance level of what happened in some of these countries during these years is so high. Seriously, did they just stop teaching it at some point? I don't get it.
They don’t teach this in american school at least until you get to undergrad and can pick them as electives. History class usually stops after wwii. Mine didn’t even cover past wwi.
If they teach about it people might be able to identify the actual problems of authoritarianism and having an elite class. Rather than throwing any and everything they don't like under the communist label.
Hungary is a particularly interesting case. Failed a populist uprising in 1919. Then failed again in 1945 when the Independent Smallholders’ Party won a clear majority over the communist party. Then came the "salami tactics" (secret police arrests/killings under accusations of "fascism" or conspiracy) until the "election" in 1949 which just ended up being straight down the party line (after they merged with the socialists). Not to mention the Red Army never really left after the end of WWII.
It's not the typical story people usually think about with either a populist uprising or the Red Terror.
They also came quite close to succeeding, initially it looked like the Politburo would actually remove Soviet troops and let much of what they wanted to happen.
Then Khrushchev and the rest decided that if they let Hungary "go" they'd have a problem justifying to the people of the other not entirely willing Warsaw Pact countries why they couldn't also go.
(Dramatically simplifying for brevity), it was also really bad time for it to happen because we (the British), French and Israeli’s decided to start a massive crisis in the middle east 2 days earlier which over shadowed events in Hungary.
My missus is Hungarian, god help you if you say that Hungary was in the USSR to her because no one else will.
Her family (and her father in particular) loathed the Hungarian Communist Party but he was something of an Anglophile which he passed on to her and indirectly that worked out for me, so when Hungary joined the EU/combined with the Hungarian government saying "If you don't like it leave" (summarising again) she decided to say "OK" and move to the UK.
The soviets steamed rolled any opposition, but let's not forget that there were tons of people who were cheering for unsympathetic communism before the fact.
The Soviets certainly were a significant factor but that doesn't tell us how much Hungarians contributed. Not everyone in Hungary revolted; no doubt many cooperated.
But I don't mean to dismiss the courage of those who did revolt. Not only does it inspire others (I'm sure the Prague Spring was inspired by it, and others later), it changed how the world looked at the Soviet Union and their relationships with the Eastern European countries they dominated.
General Soviet policy for areas where "everybody" resisted their yoke was to kill off everybody. Purists in comfy philosophy classrooms are free to argue whether or not that is the morally optimal outcome.
Assuming you're not trolling, you should really dig in more. They basically had it down to a science - what with the execution rooms with the chair and slot, blood draining into the floor, pre-dug mass graves, etc.
As a hungarian: agent would imply a member of the secret police which have already been released years ago. These are informants, regular people like students and teachers to members of the churches to actors and musicians etc.
Also
1, this should have been released long ago cause many of these people are already dead.
2, they only released the official record of the informant. Their background, who contacted them (from the secret police), when they were approached etc. But there is nothing about actual reports, like _did they do anything at all_ or not.
Even the Nobel Prize winner (2023) Karikó Katalin has a record on her yet she already wrote her autobiography years ago mentioning this, how and when she was approached and she didn't report anything at all. Now everyone have to decide on their own what to believe or not.
https://szegeder.hu/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/6c145795-f972...
>1, this should have been released long ago cause many of these people are already dead.
Best that can happen. People will be disappointed but that's it. If the IMs are still alive it can get really ugly really quick.
“identifying up to 60,000 informants”
As far as I understand they released different kind of documents, and some of them might be agents’. But at this point I don’t think it is feasible to accurately differentiate who was agent and who only an informant.
The title of the article is "up to 60,000 former agents revealed"
Yes, and the first sentence used the word “informants”. See my comment above.
> Now everyone have to decide on their own what to believe or not.
I decide to believe that communism doesn't look like a nice system and I decide to believe that I really don't believe those saying: "this time we'll make communism work".
>As a hungarian: agent would imply a member of the secret police which have already been released years ago. These are informants, regular people like students and teachers to members of the churches to actors and musicians etc.
Yes and? That they did it for free instead of for pay is supposed to make it better?
And agent is not the same as informer. Whether it's better, worse, or the same is up to you.
Agents vs informants is a venn diagram. Some informants become active participants under orders of an intelligence officer, they are instructed to use their access for further tasks. Some agents infiltrate groups and inform their handler on group activities and membership. Not all agents inform (they may perform things like sabotage or murder) and not all informants are instructed to do anything (they are paid and never contacted again).
"And agent is not the same as informer"
The difference is not really clear in reality and can get blurry quickly. Informants can also be ordered to do more active things to get information - or spread missinformation, or be ordered to do other active things. Simple things like luring a person to a party, or using their influence of position to prevent or make something happen (punish/promote a student/worker, make a certain result go away, ..).
So the majority were likely passive informants with the job of writing reports, but not all of them. And to me it rather would matter if they took the job voluntarily or were forced to do it.
Informants are often compensated in a variety of ways. Maybe you get some cash or maybe you avoid arrest or torture in exchange for giving up someone else. Or maybe becoming an informant was a criteria for government sponsorship in academics or sports or to keep their position in a high profile career. Although some informants just do it for ego or ideological reasons. Is your neighbor annoying you with their late night clandestine meetings? Rat them out! It's unfortunate that these records don't include reasons as to why someone became an informant and what information they actually contributed, if any.
"i like waffles"
"oh so you HATE pancakes?!"
this is to say, no, it just means what it means. rest is all you man.
Your silence about ice cream is very telling...
If you want to search the archives that they released: https://nyitottaktak.hu/#kereses
The article links to this site and that's the search page
Trying to find it, but my lack of Hungarian skill is not helping: Is there a website available to search by name or anything?
https://nyitottaktak.hu/#kereses
Interesting how long this took. Poland cleaned house almost immediately after they kicked the russians out.
And in Russia itself it turned out to be one of the biggest subversions: in August 1991, Yeltsin famously and inexplicably stopped his followers on their way to the KGB building where all the archives were stored. [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKpEu-62BBc
One thing I noticed is that Eastern Europe is always quick to blame the Soviets for their communist dictatorships conveniently forgetting the millions of "fellow travellers" along the way.
Hungary had a revolution against Soviet control that was brutally suppressed and hundreds of thousands of people fled or were exiled. So yes, the Soviets were absolutely responsible for their communist dictatorship because they killed or removed anyone that did not comply
I don't know why the ignorance level of what happened in some of these countries during these years is so high. Seriously, did they just stop teaching it at some point? I don't get it.
They don’t teach this in american school at least until you get to undergrad and can pick them as electives. History class usually stops after wwii. Mine didn’t even cover past wwi.
If they teach about it people might be able to identify the actual problems of authoritarianism and having an elite class. Rather than throwing any and everything they don't like under the communist label.
Hungary is a particularly interesting case. Failed a populist uprising in 1919. Then failed again in 1945 when the Independent Smallholders’ Party won a clear majority over the communist party. Then came the "salami tactics" (secret police arrests/killings under accusations of "fascism" or conspiracy) until the "election" in 1949 which just ended up being straight down the party line (after they merged with the socialists). Not to mention the Red Army never really left after the end of WWII.
It's not the typical story people usually think about with either a populist uprising or the Red Terror.
They also came quite close to succeeding, initially it looked like the Politburo would actually remove Soviet troops and let much of what they wanted to happen.
Then Khrushchev and the rest decided that if they let Hungary "go" they'd have a problem justifying to the people of the other not entirely willing Warsaw Pact countries why they couldn't also go.
(Dramatically simplifying for brevity), it was also really bad time for it to happen because we (the British), French and Israeli’s decided to start a massive crisis in the middle east 2 days earlier which over shadowed events in Hungary.
My missus is Hungarian, god help you if you say that Hungary was in the USSR to her because no one else will.
Her family (and her father in particular) loathed the Hungarian Communist Party but he was something of an Anglophile which he passed on to her and indirectly that worked out for me, so when Hungary joined the EU/combined with the Hungarian government saying "If you don't like it leave" (summarising again) she decided to say "OK" and move to the UK.
The soviets steamed rolled any opposition, but let's not forget that there were tons of people who were cheering for unsympathetic communism before the fact.
The Soviets certainly were a significant factor but that doesn't tell us how much Hungarians contributed. Not everyone in Hungary revolted; no doubt many cooperated.
But I don't mean to dismiss the courage of those who did revolt. Not only does it inspire others (I'm sure the Prague Spring was inspired by it, and others later), it changed how the world looked at the Soviet Union and their relationships with the Eastern European countries they dominated.
And that's exactly where the term 'tankie' comes from.
You are right, we should be blaming Americans and British for selling us in Yalta.
General Soviet policy for areas where "everybody" resisted their yoke was to kill off everybody. Purists in comfy philosophy classrooms are free to argue whether or not that is the morally optimal outcome.
Proof please.
Assuming you're not trolling, you should really dig in more. They basically had it down to a science - what with the execution rooms with the chair and slot, blood draining into the floor, pre-dug mass graves, etc.
One example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre