![Budapest-Terror Museum](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Budapest-Terror_Museum.jpg)
The State Protection Authority ( hu, Államvédelmi Hatóság, ÁVH) was the
secret police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...
of the
People's Republic of Hungary
The Hungarian People's Republic ( hu, Magyar Népköztársaság) was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949
to 23 October 1989.
It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Uni ...
from 1945 to 1956. The ÁVH was conceived as an external appendage of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
's
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
in Hungary responsible for supporting the ruling
Hungarian Working People's Party
The Hungarian Working People's Party (, abbr. MDP) was the ruling communist party of Hungary from 1948 to 1956.
It was formed by a merger of the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) and the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP).Neubauer, John, a ...
and persecuting
political criminal
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their politics, political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, al ...
s. The ÁVH gained a reputation for
brutality during a series of
purge
In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertak ...
s but was gradually reined under the government of
Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy (; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (''de facto'' Prime Minister) of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader ...
, a moderate reformer, after he was appointed
Prime Minister of Hungary
The prime minister of Hungary ( hu, Magyarország miniszterelnöke) is the head of government of Hungary. The prime minister and the Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Parliament, to their political part ...
in 1953. The ÁVH was dissolved by Nagy's revolutionary government during the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the Hunga ...
and succeeded by the
Ministry of Internal Affairs III
Department III of the Ministry of Internal Affairs ( hu, Belügyminisztérium III. Főcsoportfőnökség), also known as the State Security Department of the Ministry of Interior ( hu, Belügyminisztérium Állambiztonsági Szervek), was the sec ...
.
Archived data related to the ÁVH and the Ministry of Internal Affairs III are made available through the .
History
This is a summary of the organisations acting as
political police
Secret police (or political police) are intelligence, security or police agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of a ...
between 1945 and 1956.
* 1945:
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
Department of State Political Police, (''Budapesti Főkapitányság Politikai Rendészeti Osztálya'', PRO)
* 1946: Hungarian State Police State Defense Department, (''Magyar Államrendőrség Államvédelmi Osztálya'', ÁVO)
* 1950: State Protection Authority, (''Államvédelmi Hatóság'', ÁVH)
* 1956: the agency was abolished by the revolutionary government of
Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy (; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (''de facto'' Prime Minister) of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader ...
.
Between 1945 and 1952,
Gábor Péter
Gábor Péter (born as Benjámin Eisenberger in Újfehértó, 14 May 1906 – Budapest, 23 January 1993) was a Hungarian Communist politician. Between 1945 and 1952 he was the absolute leader of the State Protection Authority (''Államvédelmi H ...
(Benjamin Eisenberger) was the absolute leader of the State Protection Authority ''(Államvédelmi Hatóság)'', responsible for much cruelty, brutality and many political purges. László Rajk, the Communist Minister of Interior played a crucial role in organizing the State Protection Authority (AHV), but in 1949 he was one of its victims.
1953 Wallenberg show trial preparations
ÁVH actions were not subject to
judicial review
Judicial review is a process under which executive, legislative and administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompat ...
. On April 7, 1953, early in the morning, Miksa Domonkos, one of the leaders of the Neologue
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
community in Budapest was kidnapped by ÁVH officials to extract "
confessions".
[Interview with István Domonkos](_blank)
, son of Miksa Domonkos who died after the show trial preparations Preparations for a
show trial
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so th ...
started in Budapest in 1953 to prove that
Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (4 August 1912 – disappeared 17 January 1945)He is presumed to have died in 1947, although the circumstances of his death are not clear and this date has been disputed. Some reports claim he was alive years later. 31 J ...
had not been dragged off in 1945 to the Soviet Union but was the victim of
cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan may refer to:
Food and drink
* Cosmopolitan (cocktail), also known as a "Cosmo"
History
* Rootless cosmopolitan, a Soviet derogatory epithet during Joseph Stalin's anti-Semitic campaign of 1949–1953
Hotels and resorts
* Cosmopoli ...
Zionist
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
s. For the purposes of this show trial, two more Jewish leaders – Dr. László Benedek and Lajos Stöckler (a leader of Hungary's Neologue Jews) – as well as two would-be "eyewitnesses" –
Pál Szalai
Pál Szalai (September 3, 1915 – January 16, 1994) also spelled Pál Szalay and later anglicized as Paul Sterling was a high-ranking Hungarian police officer and reinstated member of the Arrow Cross Party after 1944. In 1945, together with ...
and
Károly Szabó :''See also Károly Szabó (Ambassador to the United States)''
Károly Szabó (November 17, 1916 – October 28, 1964) was an employee of the Swedish Embassy in Budapest from 1944 to 1945 when he rescued Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. ...
– were arrested and interrogated by torture.
The last people to meet Wallenberg in Budapest were Ottó Fleischmann, Károly Szabó, and Pál Szalai, who were invited to a supper at the Swedish Embassy building in Gyopár street on January 12, 1945. The next day, January 13, Wallenberg contacted the Russians. By 1953, Ottó Fleischmann had left Hungary, working as a
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
,
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504, ,
Ghent
Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded in ...
,
Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
,
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
&
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian ce ...
.
On 8 April 1953, Károly Szabó was captured on the street and arrested without any legal procedure. His family had no news of him throughout the following six months. A
secret trial was conducted against him of which no official record is available to date. After six months of interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion.
The idea that the "murderers of Wallenberg" were Budapest
Zionists
Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
was primarily supported by
Hungarian Communist leader and democratic reformer
Ernő Gerő
Ernő Gerő (; born Ernő Singer; 8 July 1898 – 12 March 1980) was a Hungarian Communist leader in the period after World War II and briefly in 1956 the most powerful man in Hungary as the second secretary of its ruling communist party.
Ear ...
(a non-Jewish Jew born as Ernő Singer), which is shown by a note sent by him to First Secretary
Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi (; born Mátyás Rosenfeld; 9 March 1892
– 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian communis ...
(another non-Jewish Jew born as Mátyás Rosenfeld). The show trial was then initiated in Moscow, following
Stalin's anti-Zionist campaign. After the death of Stalin and somewhat later execution of the former NKVD chief
Lavrentiy Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ; – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik ...
, the preparations for the trial were eventually stopped and the arrested persons were released in fall 1953 under condition that they are not to divulge any part of the arrest. Lajos Stöckler became severely impaired psychologically from torture. Miksa Domonkos spent a week in hospital and died shortly afterwards at home, mainly due to the torture he had been subjected to.
Hungarian Quarterly
In Hungarian Revolution of 1956
During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, elements of the insurgents tracked down and killed both known and suspected ÁVH officers and informants. When the Revolution began, a crowd of some thousand people attacked the police headquarters in Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
, shouting slogan
A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan, political slogan, political, Advertising slogan, commercial, religious, and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the publi ...
s such as "tear down the star!" and "free the prisoners!", referring to the enormous red star that stood on the building's roof
A roof ( : roofs or rooves) is the top covering of a building, including all materials and constructions necessary to support it on the walls of the building or on uprights, providing protection against rain, snow, sunlight, extremes of temper ...
, a symbol of communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
and to the many prisoners kept inside. Fearing for the lives of both himself and his officers, the chief of the police let the crowd into the building, allowing them to take any political prisoner
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...
s they wanted.
During and after the siege of the Hungarian Working People's Party headquarters (in Republic Square, ''Köztársaság tér''), some members of the ÁVH were lynched, a fact later extensively used in party propaganda to back up the claim that the revolution was of a "fascistic, anti-Semitic and reactionary" nature.
Persecution by József Dudás' militia
Attacks on the ÁVH became a significant activity only as informal truce
A ceasefire (also known as a truce or armistice), also spelled cease fire (the antonym of 'open fire'), is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be between state act ...
s developed between the student-controlled combat organisations and the Soviet troops in Budapest. Freed from the necessity of immediate combat, the József Dudás
József Dudás (22 September 1912 – 19 January 1957), a Hungarian politician and resistance fighter, was born in Marosvásárhely (in Romanian: Târgu Mureş) in Austria-Hungary (today in Transylvania, Romania).As a very young man, he joined the ...
militia planned a series of reprisals against ÁVH officers, informants, and on a few occasions against ordinary Communist-party members caught up in the revolution.
On October 29, in the second week of the revolution, the Dudás militia attacked the headquarters of the secret police in Budapest, massacring the ÁVH inside. This event was well documented by both western and eastern journalists and photographers, and constituted the primary evidence against Imre Nagy and other members of his cabinet in the White Books
White is the lightness, lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully diffuse reflection, reflect and scattering, scatter all the ...
.
A Western eyewitness said:
:The secret police lie twisted in the gutter ..the Hungarians will not touch the corpse of an ÁVH man, not even to close the eyes or straighten the neck.
After Dudás' militia assaulted the building, the surrounding crowd lynched
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
a number of ÁVH officers. Highly visible in photographs of this attack are the party's paybooks displayed on to the corpses, demonstrating that ÁVH soldiers received at least 10 times the wage
A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remuner ...
s of a manual worker.
Reaction of revolutionary forces to Dudás
When the students' and workers' councils discovered what the Dudás group was doing, they instituted armed patrols to arrest and detain ÁVH members for their own safety, and for future planned trials. As a result of Dudás' massacres, and the students' policy of arrest, many ÁVH voluntarily turned themselves in to students' or workers' councils to seek protective custody. This was a reflection of the shared student-worker policy of keeping the revolution pure and bloodless. Dudás was sought for arrest by the students' and workers' councils.
Retaliation
Unsurprisingly, when the Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republic ...
intervened in the revolution to support the government, ÁVH officers carried out brutal reprisal
A reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Since the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP 1), reprisals in the laws of war are extreme ...
s against those who had killed their comrades. The ÁVH generally targeted all revolutionaries, and received significant assistance from the Soviet Union's security apparatus, who arrested the Nagy government, General Pál Maléter
Pál Maléter (4 September 1917 – 16 June 1958) was the military leader of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Maléter was born to Hungarian parents in Eperjes, a city in Sáros County, in the northern part of Historical Hungary, today Prešov ...
, and deported thousands of students and workers to the Soviet Union.
House of Terror
Shortly after the Arrow Cross Party
The Arrow Cross Party ( hu, Nyilaskeresztes Párt – Hungarista Mozgalom, , abbreviated NYKP) was a far-right Hungarian ultranationalist party led by Ferenc Szálasi, which formed a government in Hungary they named the Government of National ...
left it, the building under the address 60 Andrássy Avenue
The House of Andrássy is the name of a Hungarian noble family of very ancient lineage that was prominent in Hungarian history. The full family name is ''Andrássy de Csíkszentkirály et Krasznahorka''. ''Csíkszentkirály'' is a town in modern ...
became the ÁVH Headquarters. The building is now a museum called '' The House of Terror'', commemorating the victims of both political systems.
End of ÁVH
The subsequent government of János Kádár
János József Kádár (; ; 26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989), born János József Czermanik, was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, a position he held for 32 years. Declining health le ...
did not wish to resurrect the ÁVH under this name after 1956 (Kádár was tortured by the ÁVH in the 1950s), yet it flourished in the system of the Ministry of Interior (Hungarian BM). This should be considered in the light of the use of the Soviet security apparatus directly in Hungary after the 1956 revolution, and in preparation for the trial of Nagy and "his accomplices". Between 1956 and 1963 Kádár, a natural opportunist, fought an inner party battle against hardline Stalinists, although he accepted the services of many cruel former AVH torturers.
Kádár's victory was signalled in 1963 by a general amnesty
Amnesty (from the Ancient Greek ἀμνηστία, ''amnestia'', "forgetfulness, passing over") is defined as "A pardon extended by the government to a group or class of people, usually for a political offense; the act of a sovereign power offici ...
for the 1956 revolutionaries, an indication of the absence of a political police. Hungary would go on to be the only Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republic ...
country without a formal intelligence service, since all intelligence and espionage functions were vested in the AVH, and later the Hungarian Ministry of Interior.
Duties
While the security apparatus was operating, it supported the Hungarian Working People's Party
The Hungarian Working People's Party (, abbr. MDP) was the ruling communist party of Hungary from 1948 to 1956.
It was formed by a merger of the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) and the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP).Neubauer, John, a ...
(MDP) directly, with little reference made to Government norms. This support was primarily through the secret gathering of intelligence, largely through a vast network of informant
An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informan ...
s, like the system used by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maint ...
) in the German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
.
The investigation network was supplemented with a mechanism of secret arrests, followed by extensive periods of torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
(lasting between 3 and 18 months). When the apparatus had extracted confessions of varying quality from a prison
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correc ...
er, the State's system of public procurator
A public procurator () is an officer of a state charged with both the investigation and prosecution of crime. The office is a feature of a civil law inquisitorial rather than common law adversarial system. Countries such as Japan, China, Russi ...
s and court
A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance ...
s would be called in to make a ruling on the sentence. This was the norm of operation for the ÁVH, and was diverged from in matters of only utmost state security; for example, the illegal arrest and indefinite solitary detention of the Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...
operative Edith Bone
Edith Bone (28 January 1889 – 14 February 1975), originally Edit Olga Hajós, was a medical professional, journalist and translator who later became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Early life
Bone was born in Hungary in 1889. ...
. Despite the forced nature of confessions, retractions at trial were not considered a danger to the process, due to the obvious threat of continued torture during a recess of the trial.
International activities
The ÁVH also assisted the Soviet sphere security apparatus by staging show trial
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so th ...
s. In two cases, the ÁVH was given the privilege of leading an attack on undesired elements throughout Hungary. In 1948 the Roman Catholic Cardinal József Mindszenty was tried and imprisoned. In 1949, the ÁVH arrested Hungarian Communist Party
The Hungarian Communist Party ( hu, Magyar Kommunista Párt, abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary ( hu, Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja, abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar ...
member László Rajk
László Rajk (8 March 1909 – 15 October 1949) was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power (for example, organizi ...
, who was then tried and executed for nationalism
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...
and Titoism
Titoism is a political philosophy most closely associated with Josip Broz Tito during the Cold War. It is characterized by a broad Yugoslav identity, workers' self-management, a political separation from the Soviet Union, and leadership in the ...
in a show trial that signified to the international communist movement that Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
was now a threat. (László Rajk was the man who had organised the ÁVH.)
Concentration camps
Following sentence, political prisoner
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...
s were imprisoned in ÁVH-run concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
s. These camps were mixed and varied. Early camps tended to be cruder and more cruel. In particular, the status of ex-party members varied. In camps prior to 1953 they were more harshly treated than other prisoners. After 1953, ex-party members were a virtual aristocracy
Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'.
At t ...
within prisons. Additionally, prior to 1953 certain camps had as their goal the eventual death of inmates due to overwork and maltreatment. In a number of cases, torture was an essential part of camp life and discipline.
Imre Nagy's first government from 1953 to 1955 vastly improved conditions in the camps and halted the efforts to exterminate political prisoners.
Successor
The Hungarian Ministry of Interior created the Ministry of Internal Affairs III
Department III of the Ministry of Internal Affairs ( hu, Belügyminisztérium III. Főcsoportfőnökség), also known as the State Security Department of the Ministry of Interior ( hu, Belügyminisztérium Állambiztonsági Szervek), was the sec ...
for domestic and foreign intelligence purposes until the end of the Cold War.
Notes
References
External links
The history of ÁVH
(in Hungarian), from the website of the ''Public Historical Files of the Hungarian Secret Service
'
Homepage Raoul Wallenberg Asso.fr
An informative review in ''East Central Europe''
(in English)
{{Authority control
Government agencies established in 1945
Government agencies disestablished in 1956
Hungarian Revolution of 1956
Allamvedelmi Hatosag
Allamvedelmi Hatosag
Collaborators with the Soviet Union
Eastern Bloc
Communist repression
Secret police
Defunct Hungarian intelligence agencies