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 U ...

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 List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

's KGB in Hungary responsible for supporting the ruling Hungarian Working People's Party and persecuting political criminals. The ÁVH gained a reputation for

brutality Brutality or brutal most commonly refers to: * Violence, physical force unlawfully exercised toward property and/or persons ** Battery (crime) ** Police brutality Brutality or brutal may also refer to: Media * '' Brutal: Paws of Fury'', a 1994 ...

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 underta ...

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 Hung ...

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 se ...

. 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 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

. Between 1945 and 1952, Gábor Péter (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 incom ...

. 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
, son of Miksa Domonkos who died after the show trial preparations Preparations for a show trial 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

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 J ...

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 – 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 ...

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,

Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest i ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard language, Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the List of cities in Italy, second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 ...

Turin Turin ( , 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 from 1861 to 1865. Th ...

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Regions of Italy, 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 t ...

. 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 Jew ...

was primarily supported by Hungarian Communist leader and democratic reformer Ernő Gerő (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

(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 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 ...

, 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

, shouting

slogan A slogan is a memorable motto or phrase used in a clan, political, commercial, religious, and other context as a repetitive expression of an idea or purpose, with the goal of persuading members of the public or a more defined target group. Th ...

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 temp ...

, 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 ...

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 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 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 ac ...

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 joine ...

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 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 reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. W ...

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 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 remun ...

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 republi ...

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 Prešo ...

, 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 Nationa ...

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 ''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speak ...

'', 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 l ...

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 offic ...

for the 1956 revolutionaries, an indication of the absence of a political police. Hungary would go on to be the only

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 (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 informant ...

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 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 maintaining state author ...

) 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 ...

(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 procurators and

court A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to Adjudication, adjudicate legal disputes between Party (law), parties and carry out the administration of justice in Civil law (common law), civil, C ...

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 CPGB ...

operative Edith Bone. 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 trials. 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, 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 t ...

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=Juhoslavij ...

was now a threat. (László Rajk was the man who had organised the ÁVH.)

Concentration camps

Following sentence,

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 simp ...

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 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

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