English
Magyar
Rolf Müller
Places of Violence
The expansion of the political police in Budapest, 1945—1956
The most symbolic scene of the Hungarian communist dictatorship is Go Andrássy Avenue in Budapest. However, it is less known that the building located on the impressive boulevard of the capital city was only used by the political police between 1945 and 1950, and the State Protection Authority was no longer operating here at the height ofits power. It is also not known that after the Second World War, in addition to the ominous house, several surrounding and nearby properties were occupied by Gábor Péter's organisation, and within a few years, it formed itsown quarter" in the heart of Budapest. In fact, the political police had premises in other parts of the capital city, as did the infamous "Katpol", which was responsible for military investigations. Almost all of these venues were associated with violence in its physical, psychological, demonstrative or hidden form, which fundamentally determined the operations and, ofcourse, the perception of these organisations. In my article I attempt to reconstruct the beginnings and the process of buil/ing out a real estate empire in Budapest in the years preceding the revolution.
Tibor Takács
Secret Rendezvous in the Invisible City
Meeting Places of the Network of the Hungarian State Security Service in Nyíregyháza in the Kádár Era
The operation of the political police was fundamentally aimed at establishing control over physical, geographical spaces, even if this was not always successful. The article examines these spatial aspects of the operation of the state security service, more precisely, one element of it, the meeting places of the agents’ network, in one country town, Nyíregyháza. The state security network only functioned if the case officers met agents at certain intervals to receive the information they had acquired wand to give them instructions. This needed, above all, places where the meetings could take place, which, with a few exceptions, were used by others as well. The conspiracy required that the network rendezvous follow the norms of “average”, “civilian” use of space, that is, they should appear to outsiders as an ordinary conversation. Nevertheless, there were significant, even fundamental, differences in the state security and non-state security use of the same spatial segments. Accordingly, texts about space use reveal a lot about the everyday practical operation of the Communist State Security Service, while also making visible how the town and its residents used the spaces in their everyday life.
Zsolt Krahulcsán
Gorbachev in Budapest
Operational arrangements for the Soviet party general secretary's visit to Budapest in 1986
The protection of communist party leaders and party functionaries was provided by the Government Police of the Ministry of the Interior [Belügyminisztérium Kormányőrsége] together with the relevant department of the political police. They provided and coordinated the operational protection of top party and state leaders and high-level visitors to Hungary, including the operational provision of programmes for protected leaders.
This was also the case during the visit of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (cpsu) and his wife, and during the meeting of the Political Consultative Council (pcc) of the Warsaw Pact member states in Budapest.
The visit of the Gorbachev couple to Budapest was one of the major media events of the era. In the days before their arrival, the press was already full of coverage of the visit of the Soviet party leader, and on the day of their arrival the Népszabadság newspaper greeted the couple on the front page, while the television broadcast live coverage of the welcome ceremony at Ferihegy Airport.
The visit, which lasted several days, and the series of meetings of the wp countries took place without any major incidents or scandals. Hungary showd the world that it was capable of safely organising a series of meetings of international importance and that it could provide security for one of the world’s most closely guarded leaders. The article reconstructs the preparations for the operational security of the visit, the precautions taken and the reactions of the Hungarian political leadership.
Lukács Krajcsír
Deception at the Highest
The Czechoslovak State Security’s Operation Kámen
Operation Kamen [Stone] was an operation of the Czechoslovak State Security (StB), lasting from 1948 to 1951. Its main objective was to deceive and capture citizens who attempted to defect from socialist Czechoslovakia to American-occupied zones in West Germany. For this purpose, they organised their own human trafficking network and arranged fake border crossings along the Czechoslovakian-West German border. Moreover, the StB dressed its agents in American military uniforms, interrogated the emigrants and “deported” them back to Czechoslovakia… where there were all arrested and taken to court. In the first chapter, the article examines the circumstances of the Kámen, with details of the most important StBofficers. The second, third and fourth chapters deals with the four stages of the whole operation: recruitment, trafficking across the fake border, the interrogation by “Americans”, and “deportation”. The next part shows how the Kamen was compromised and how the United States responded to it. Finally, the conclusion describes the later fate of the main actors and the perception of the operation within the Czech State Security.
Ferenc Semsei
Coping Strategies in the Markó Street Prison
In my article, I present the living conditions and coping strategies of the inmates imprisoned in the infamous prison building built in 1892. My aim is not to present the history of the institution in detail, but to reconstruct the mental struggle of political prisoners to preserve their mental health and stay alive. The strategies offered by the numerous works on the subject – memoirs and diaries – were categorised by means of the 12 higher-order coping dimensions (problem-solving, information seeking, helplessness, escape, self-reliance, seeking support, delegating, isolation, accommodation, negotiation, subordination, confrontation) as defined by psychologist Attila Oláh.
The 12 dimensions of coping outlined by Oláh may be suitable if the necessary criteria are formulated to interpret the writings of the imprisoned historicalfigures, using interdisciplinary methods, also formulating the future question whether the different rules and regulations of the individual penitentiaries had an impact on these dimensions.
Péter Hevő
Cross-Border Cases
A BOOKREVIEW ON
Peter Boeger: Die Stasi und die innerdeutschen Grenzübergangsstellen 1961–1989.
Eine kommentierte Edition ausgewählter Dokumente
[The Stasi and the Inner-German Border Crossing
Points 1961–1989: An Annotated Edition of Selected Documents].
Berlin, Bundesarchiv/Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv, 2024. 276 p.
The aim of the book is to shed light on various aspects of the complex relationship between East German border crossings and the Stasi through a deeper analysis of primary sources. The author follows a chronological order, covering the decades between 1961 and 1989, and examines only the gdr crossings to the frg and West Berlin, whether by road, rail, or inland waterways. All the sources are from the Stasi- Unterlagen-Archiv, the majority are MfS orders, with a smaller number of documents from the Tax and Customs Administration and the Council of Ministers. The eight topics cover a very wide range, from what is considered “traditional” Stasi activities, through garbage collection to anti-terrorist operations. Peter Boeger’s choice of topics thus illustrates how the relationship of the two German states changed, and shows that it was not as static as many people imagine.
János Főcze
The History of Berettyóújfalu Becoming an rndustrialised City
A BOOKREVIEW ON
Husvéth András — Kovács Gergely — Szikla Gergő:
Die Stasi und die innerdeutschen
Az iparosított faluváros. Berettyóújfalu szovjetizálásától a várossá válásáig (1944—1979)
[The Industrialized Rural Town. Berettyóújfalu's History from Sovietization to Becoming a Town, 1944—1979].
Berettyóújfalu, Bihari Múzeum, 2024-540 p.
In their recently published book, András Husvéth, Gergely Kovács and Gergő Szikla analysed different aspects of the history of Berettyóújfalu between 1944 and 1979. In separate studies, they deal with the political transition after the Second World War, the fate of the Jews during and after the war, the local events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the 1956 reprisals, the socialist transformation of society, agriculture and industry, and the process of the settlemenťs urbanisation. Although they stressed that it was not their aim to write a monograph of Berettyóújfalu between the Second World War and 1979, they certainly laid the foundations for such a work. The problem of the duality of socialist modernisation (on the one hand, the system eliminated the middle peasantry, but on the other hand, it created a more efficient agricultural production System) was also raised in the s tudies. Perhaps it is precisely the meticulous, source-based historiography that characterises this book, and the locality of the story that can bring us closer to a better understanding ofthis particular issue and of the period as well.