“Allow citizens to explore gray areas of their past”: in Hungary, the government unearths old secrets from the communist period

Sandor Tar sent his letter from Debrecen, the country's second city, on October 30, 1999.

Ten years after the fall of the People's Republic and the death of its emblematic leader, Janos Kadar, this 58-year-old writer has an explanation to give to an old friend, while his name has just appeared in declassified archives unmasking informants: he spied on him on behalf of the political police, the AVH.

“At the beginning, they just asked me to report on two or three meetings, to search the premises, to check if there were weapons, printing equipment…” he explains to Janos Kenedi.

In the 1980s, the latter was editor of the literary magazine Mozgo Vilag, originally an official organ of the Communist Youth, a sensitive position that state security kept an eye on.

“I am vulnerable to blackmail, and this has been used against me,” Sandor Tar writes enigmatically. We will learn later that lieutenant-colonel…