As a hungarian: agent would imply a member of the secret police which have already been released years ago. These are informants, regular people like students and teachers to members of the churches to actors and musicians etc.
Also
1, this should have been released long ago cause many of these people are already dead.
2, they only released the official record of the informant. Their background, who contacted them (from the secret police), when they were approached etc. But there is nothing about actual reports, like _did they do anything at all_ or not.
Even the Nobel Prize winner (2023) Karikó Katalin has a record on her yet she already wrote her autobiography years ago mentioning this, how and when she was approached and she didn't report anything at all. Now everyone have to decide on their own what to believe or not.
good opportunity for Americans now especially to understand the different tiers of foreign operatives within any given country:
1. an agent (James Bond is the canonical example)
2. an asset
3. a useful idiot
The trick is that sometimes its harder to tell which flavor a particular individual best fits, at least from the outside with insufficient data. Some we might assume are agents/assets might be merely useful idiots, or vice versa.
One thing I noticed is that Eastern Europe is always quick to blame the Soviets for their communist dictatorships conveniently forgetting the millions of "fellow travellers" along the way.
Hungary: Communist-era files released, up to 60k former agents revealed
(euronews.com)231 points by rdmuser 5 November 2026 | 70 comments
Comments
Also
1, this should have been released long ago cause many of these people are already dead.
2, they only released the official record of the informant. Their background, who contacted them (from the secret police), when they were approached etc. But there is nothing about actual reports, like _did they do anything at all_ or not.
Even the Nobel Prize winner (2023) Karikó Katalin has a record on her yet she already wrote her autobiography years ago mentioning this, how and when she was approached and she didn't report anything at all. Now everyone have to decide on their own what to believe or not.
https://szegeder.hu/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/6c145795-f972...
The article links to this site and that's the search page
1. an agent (James Bond is the canonical example)
2. an asset
3. a useful idiot
The trick is that sometimes its harder to tell which flavor a particular individual best fits, at least from the outside with insufficient data. Some we might assume are agents/assets might be merely useful idiots, or vice versa.