Films
Five films worth the time
One of them is the machinery filming itself: a documentary cut entirely from the Hungarian ministry’s own secret training films, with English subtitles. The rest set it in context, from the ÁVH headquarters in Budapest to the Stasi.
These are external videos. We did not make them, they are not the archive’s material, and what is said in them is the speakers’ own. Nothing loads from YouTube until you start a film.
01 / How the Hungarian network worked
How the Hungarian network worked
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The Life of an Agent
The most direct look there is at the machinery itself. The film is cut together entirely from the Ministry of the Interior's own secret training films, made between 1958 and 1988: how to recruit, how to follow someone, how to search a flat. Not a reconstruction, the actual teaching material, with English subtitles.
02 / Before 1956: the ÁVH years
Before 1956: the ÁVH years
If your family left Hungary in 1956, the name they remember is probably ÁVH, the security organisation of 1945 to 1956. Worth knowing before you watch: most of the records that opened on 4 November come from the decades after that, and from a different organisation, Directorate III/III. The ÁVH is the right period for 1956, not for a file from the 1970s.
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Secrets, spies and terror: inside Budapest's ÁVH headquarters
A short modern tour of 60 Andrássy Avenue, the ÁVH headquarters, now the House of Terror museum. It is about the early, most violent period, and it is the fastest way to understand what people fled from in 1956.
03 / The wider picture
The wider picture
These are about other countries, and they are here as context, not as coverage: this site is about the Hungarian records only. Most English-language readers already have the East German Stasi as their reference point, so it is a useful thing to measure the Hungarian system against.
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Stasi, Securitate and ÁVH: how the Iron Curtain spied on its own people
A comparison of the Hungarian, Romanian and East German machinery side by side. The closest thing to an answer to the question of how typical, or how untypical, Hungary was.
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What did the Stasi do?
Three and a half animated minutes on what a surveillance state actually is. If you have never read about any of this, start here and come back.
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The Stasi and the Berlin Wall
Deutsche Welle's own documentary. East German rather than Hungarian, but it is professionally made and it shows the mechanism at the scale where it is easiest to see.
04 / In writing
If you would rather read
- BackgroundHow the service was built, what was burned in 1989, and one informer’s thirty-two years: in the background.
- GlossaryThe fifty-two Hungarian terms you will meet on the cards, in the glossary.
- Your own familyWhat you can search for and how to send a request: on the main page.