The Appearance of the ÁVH’s Counter-Espionage Activities in the Investigation Material of a Conceptual Criminal Procedure

Abstract

The State Protection Authority (ÁVH in Hungarian), established on 1 January 1950, independent of the Ministry of the Interior and operating under the direct direction of the Hungarian Working People’s Party (MDP), regularly used the human intelligence procedures that were available to
the intelligence and counterintelligence organisation in Hungary in the early 1950s.
The aim of the case study is to present the cooperation between the departments of the State Protection Authority (ÁVH) established with effect from 1 January 1950, independent of the
Ministry of the Interior and directly subordinate to the Council of Ministers, the method of sharing knowledge and its use from an information point of view, as well as to show how the detection and investigation of the supposed espionage activity served the liquidation of the kulaks which opposed to the domestic political objective of collectivisation.
The case study was prepared by comparing and processing court documents preserved in
Budapest Archives of the Capital, investigative and intelligence history documents concerning
Yugoslavia preserved in the Historical Archives of the State Security Services, as well as district
party documents preserved in the Bács-Kiskun County Archives of the Hungarian National
Archives present the activities of a county department of the State Protection Authority through a conceptual criminal case conducted in 1951 about the political police of the dictatorship.
The political police suspected a former SS officer of espionage for Yugoslavia, but by exposing
espionage activities, it was able to perform a much more important political task, to deal with
the landlord peasantry of two villages labeled kulaks.
It is clear from the proceedings that, despite the fact that Yugoslavia was seen as an enemy at
the time, the case was nevertheless used for an internal political showdown.
Based on the documents of the investigation material and the archive documents of the
intelligence and counterintelligence activities against Yugoslavia, it can be concluded that both the Hungarian and Yugoslav political police (UDB) had considerable knowledge about the secret service methods used by the other party.