Glossary

Fifty-two terms you will meet in the files

The headwords are Hungarian, because that is how you will see them on the cards and in the documents. The explanations are English. They follow the archive’s own published glossary, and the translation is ours, so where it matters the Hungarian original is the one that counts: nyitottaktak.hu. The four terms that also have a legal definition are explained on the main page.

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6-os karton (number six card)Term: The registration card holding the data of people who collaborated, or whom the service tried and failed to recruit.
Anonimizálás (anonymisation)Term: A technical procedure that makes it impossible to recognise the link between a person and a piece of data.
B-dosszié (recruitment dossier)Term: The dossier holding the papers on a person who collaborated, or whom the service tried and failed to recruit: the photographic questionnaire, the data sheet, the CV, the environmental study, the recruitment declaration, the report on how the recruitment went, the training plan, the report on the methods of contact and so on. It covers the whole arc of an informer's career.
B-napló (recruitment logbook)Term: The register book of the recruitment dossiers filed in the central records of the Ministry of the Interior.
Beszervezés (recruitment)Term: A secret, planned and targeted process in which the operative officer, using the checked information and circumstances available to him, brings the candidate to accept organised, conspiratorial cooperation.
Beszervezés alapja (basis of recruitment)Term: The existence, and sometimes the deliberate creation, of the facts and circumstances that make a recruitment possible and keep the cooperation going. The basis could be patriotic (ideological or political, meaning loyalty to the socialist system and a sense of duty), incriminating or compromising (pressure applied with sufficiently documented material from the person's past), or material interest. Some cards read “combination of bases”, meaning two or more were used together.
Célszemély (target person)Term: The person a study or a confidential investigation is directed at. Target persons were also given a cover name in operative work.
„Csiszolás során törölve” (“deleted during polishing”)Term: A state security expression marking a person removed from the register during a review.
Dekonspirálódás (exposure)Term: Being found out by people not entitled to know.
Figyelő karton (watch card)Term: A card used in the network register, holding the data of a person selected for gradual recruitment.
Fn (fedőnév) (cover name)Term: The name that hid and marked the identity of the operative officer, the network person and the target. In the documents cover names were put in quotation marks. After recruitment the informer was given one, so reports were not signed with the real name and officers did not refer to the person by it either. The cover name was agreed between the officer and the future informer during the recruitment, and it often alluded to something personal, such as a place of residence or birth, the mother's name or the occupation, though just as often it did not.
Fogdaügynök (cell informer)Term: A network person of the prison counter-intelligence, who gathered information among suspects held in pre-trial detention.
Foglalkoztatás vonala (line of employment)Term: The intelligence field in which a network person was used. By organisational structure this could be military counter-intelligence, foreign intelligence, counter-espionage, or countering the “internal reaction”. The last was broken down further into cultural, church, youth and intellectual lines, among others.
H-adattár (H database)Term: The computer database holding the network register of the Hungarian state security. The state security data saved onto the computer media of the time survives on the magnetic tapes.
Hálózat (the network)Term: All the organised secret helpers of the state security services. Members were categorised by their working relationship to the services: resident, agent, informant, secret entrusted person, secret collaborator.
Hálózaton kívüli kapcsolat (contact outside the network)Term: People who helped the work of the services regularly or occasionally. The category covered the operative contact, the occasional operative contact, the official contact, the social contact and the “personal contact”. No number six card was issued for them, they were given no cover name and had no recruitment or working dossier, but they cooperated with state security in some form.
Hazafias alap (patriotic basis)Term: A basis of recruitment: in the words of state security, the ideological and political disposition of the candidate that was expected to carry the heavier load, responsibility and risk of secret cooperation.
Informátor (informant)Term: Before 1973, the rank in the network hierarchy below resident and agent, for a person with limited possibilities for gathering information.
K-lakás (conspiratorial flat)Term: A flat maintained and run by the state security service or its cover organisation, used for conspiratorial meetings between the informer and the operative officer.
Kérdőjegy (query slip)Term: A form used to check whether a given person appeared in any of the ministry's registers.
Konspiráció (tradecraft)Term: The method of keeping the operation of the secret services hidden. It served to conceal operative work, to protect network persons, and to stop the activity, the means and the collaborators of state security from becoming known to outsiders. Its requirements covered the way contact was kept, the handling of documents, the use of cover names, and the organisation of meetings and operative measures.
M-dosszié (working dossier)Term: The dossier holding the original reports of operative value from agents, secret entrusted persons or secret collaborators, the measures taken on them, and the tasks given to the network person.
Mágnesszalag (magnetic tape)Term: A state security data store saved onto the computer media of the time, showing the state of the electronic register as it stood in 1990.
Meghiúsult beszervezés (failed recruitment)Term: The official term for the case where, despite an approved recruitment proposal, the planned secret cooperation never came about: the candidate refused, proved unsuitable, or the service dropped the plan. Where the attempt rested on incriminating material, failure could be followed by criminal proceedings. People whose recruitment failed are also in the network register, on a number six card.
MNVK-2Term: The abbreviation of the official name of the military intelligence service between 1953 and 1990: the 2nd Directorate of the General Staff of the Hungarian People's Army.
Operatív tiszt (case officer)Term: A professional member of the state security services whose job was to organise state security work, including the recruitment and running of network persons.
Rezidens (resident)Term: A secret collaborator of the network considered capable of leading a group of network persons.
Szervkód (unit code)Term: The code used in the network system to disguise the organisational units of state security and to mark them on the computer. The codes changed as the units changed.
SZTTerm: Strictly secret, szigorúan titkos.
SZT-tisztTerm: An officer on the strictly secret roster of state security. Most also had a cover occupation, at a workplace where colleagues knew nothing about the state security connection.
TTerm: Secret, titkos.
T-lakás (meeting flat)Term: A flat used by the state security services but not maintained by them, where the informer and the operative officer met.
T-tisztTerm: An officer of the secret roster working under a covered identity, whose tasks included gathering operative data in civilian settings and writing environmental studies.
Társadalmi kapcsolat (social contact)Term: Not part of the network. On request, out of conviction, this person helped the services carry out their tasks and briefed officers verbally.
Terhelő adatok (incriminating material)Term: A recruitment category in the network records. It marked that state security had used information incriminating the person, or carrying criminal consequences, to bring them into secret cooperation.
Titoktartási nyilatkozat (secrecy declaration)Term: The document drawn up when a network person was excluded or the cooperation ended, in which they undertook to keep both the relationship with state security and the state and service secrets they had learned.
Tmb (secret entrusted person)Term: Titkos megbízott. The member of the network who took part in organised secret cooperation out of ideological conviction.
Tmt (secret collaborator)Term: Titkos munkatárs. The most trusted member of the network, who took part out of conviction, with a high degree of self-sacrifice and on their own initiative, and who was considered capable of the most complex tasks.
Ügynök (agent)Term: The network person who took part in organised secret cooperation under the effect of incriminating or compromising material held by the service, or in return for material benefit.
III/I. Csoportfőnökség (Directorate III/I)Unit: The foreign civilian intelligence arm of Directorate General III (State Security) of the Ministry of the Interior, 1962 to 1990.
III/II. Csoportfőnökség (Directorate III/II)Unit: The civilian counter-espionage and anti-sabotage arm of Directorate General III, 1962 to 1990.
III/III. Csoportfőnökség (Directorate III/III)Unit: The arm of Directorate General III that watched the internal opposition, the churches and the pre-1945 social elite, 1962 to 1990. This is the unit most people mean when they say “the secret police”.
III/IV. Csoportfőnökség (Directorate III/IV)Unit: The military counter-intelligence arm of Directorate General III, 1962 to 1990.
III/V. Csoportfőnökség (Directorate III/V)Unit: The operative technology arm of Directorate General III, 1962 to 1990.
01Code: Code marking a network person whose record was classified.
03Code: A person placed under watch.
04Code: Code marking an active network person, one in current use.
06Code: An excluded network person whose record was classified.
07Code: Code marking an excluded network person.
09Code: An excluded network person whose material was destroyed.
10Code: A failed recruitment.
11Code: A network person of the 2nd Directorate of the General Staff.