REPUTATION MAKES NO DESTINCTION BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
Reading time: 6–7 minutes
A forty-year-old file can still move markets. All it takes is for the name it contains to appear on a company’s board, and customers, investors or business partners may start distancing themselves before anyone has established what the document actually proves. There can be a long road from being entered in a register to proving that someone collaborated with the authorities. By contrast, a loss of trust may be all it takes to terminate a contract or sell a block of shares. A company can therefore end up paying for a past about which the public currently assumes more than the documents can establish.
In Hungary, the investigation of the country’s state-security past is entering a new phase. From November 4th, records held by the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security Services will gradually become searchable online. The first materials to be published are the registers of individuals recruited into the network: the so-called “six-card” files, the B-registers used to log recruitment dossiers, and the H-database compiled on magnetic tapes. These records generally cannot show how much a person reported or what consequences their reports had; further documents are needed for that. According to the announced schedule, the dossiers documenting the circumstances of recruitment will follow by 25 February 2027. The pasts of people who now run companies, sit on boards, influence ownership decisions or serve as the public face of institutions may also be seen in a new light.
The 2016 Panama Papers revelations showed how quickly individuals and companies can become embroiled in an international scandal. The ICIJ, which coordinated the investigation, is careful to stress that appearing in its database does not in itself prove illegal or unethical conduct. Yet, in the public mind, simply being listed there could amount to a verdict.
Understanding how a dictatorship operated requires examining the role of those who knowingly and substantially helped monitor or undermine others. The surviving records, however, are often incomplete, and the same register may include agents of the regime, people targeted for recruitment and individuals who were themselves under surveillance. Ultimately, the difference between historical truth and public condemnation depends on whether the context behind the names can also be brought to light.
PUBLIC EXPOSURE MOVED FASTER THAN THE TRUTH
The opening of the Stasi, KGB, Czechoslovak StB and Romanian Securitate archives followed different rules, yet repeatedly exposed the same problem: personal responsibility and public judgment often drifted apart. Some people were branded on the basis of their appearance in a register; others were cleared because incriminating documents were missing. The consequences also depended on which records had survived for a particular person – and when they came to light.
In Germany, the opening of the archives in 1992 exposed personal betrayals and networks of relationships that had served the dictatorship, triggering political and media controversies for years. According to official German figures, more than 1.7 million requests to check public-sector employees for Stasi collaboration were processed. The German government’s report also acknowledged that accountability had been uneven: some informants lost their jobs, while former party officials and other people in key positions escaped consequences.
In Latvia, around 4,000 KGB files were published online at the end of 2018. Alongside names, aliases and recruitment details, the individuals’ actual activities largely remained unclear. Indulis Zālīte, the former head of the documentation centre, argued that publication lumped together people involved in serious repression with those who may not even have known they had been registered. The poet Jānis Rokpelnis, by contrast, publicly acknowledged his collaboration, yet his name was missing from the material that was released.
In Romania, former president Traian Băsescu had previously received five certificates clearing him, only to face a new procedure based on additional documents. On 23 March 2022, the Supreme Court issued a final ruling that he had collaborated with the Securitate.
In Poland, the Wildstein list, published online in 2005, mixed the names of collaborators with those of people who had been monitored and those who had resisted recruitment. Readers could not tell them apart from a name and file number alone. According to a Deutschlandfunk report, as many as 200 people a day went to the Warsaw office of the Institute of National Remembrance after publication to inspect their files. They were turning to the archives for evidence to support explanations they were already being forced to give in public.
In Czechoslovakia, former dissident Petr Cibulka published around 160,000 names in 1992. A later official Czech publication of names also led to lawsuits. In the case of Jan Vaněček, it was established that his signature had been forged, and the court ordered the Interior Ministry to remove his name. The archive had preserved the document faithfully; that did not make the claim it contained true.
THE SAME RECORDS, DIFFERENT JUDGMENTS
In Hungary, the debate over people’s past as agents was shaped by historical research, journalistic revelations and anonymous lists. The label “agent list” often obscured important distinctions. The Historical Archives’ prosopographical database traces the careers of professional officials; the 1956 Institute identified people involved in a specific state-security operation; and anonymous authors circulated lists of uncertain provenance.
In 2006, based on archival research, András Gervai identified film director István Szabó as the agent operating under the codename Endre Képesi. The revelation was followed by debate over the circumstances of his recruitment, the consequences of his reports and the moral assessment of his artistic work. More than a hundred intellectuals publicly supported the director. The disclosure of the documents did not produce a shared judgment: the reception was shaped by his body of work and by people’s personal loyalty to him.
In politics, both personal and family histories have forced people to make difficult decisions. In 2002, Péter Medgyessy faced a coalition crisis because of his own past in counterintelligence. In the same year, Zoltán Pokorni resigned as Fidesz party leader and parliamentary group leader after learning that his father had collaborated with the state security services. The consequences forced even a family member who had not taken part in the collaboration to make a decision.
The new database is entering this already charged public arena. Supporters, opponents and those who were monitored approach the same documents from different experiences and with different interests.
WHEN PERSONAL AUTHORITY BECOMES A BUSINESS ASSET
An owner’s name can attract customers, a chairperson’s network can open up markets, and an executive’s credibility can help retain employees. A company benefits from that trust – and risk travels back along the same channel. A bank may raise questions during a credit assessment, a partner when renewing a contract, and an investor during the next funding round.
Imagine a family-owned food company employing 200 people. Its eponymous founder is approaching eighty and serves as honorary chair; the company website opens with his story. A journalist contacts the press office to say that the founder’s name appears in a state-security register and asks for a response by noon the following day.
Management has several ways to get this wrong, starting with saying nothing. Alternatively, if it immediately distances itself from the founder and removes him from the website, it passes judgment before the facts are known. And if it responds with an unequivocal declaration of trust, it ties its own credibility to the founder’s defence.
The right approach is less dramatic: the company says only what it knows, and is equally clear about what it does not know.
THREE QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE KEPT EPARATE
The difficulty is that company leaders are forced to address three distinct questions at the same time.
The first concerns the facts: what does the file actually prove, and what does it not prove? Assessing this is the task of archivists, historians and, where appropriate, lawyers. The second is a matter of judgment: is the conduct that has come to light compatible with the individual’s present-day role? That is for the company’s leadership to decide, on the basis of its values and expert findings. The third concerns communication: who should say what, to whom and when, while the first two questions remain open.
Most corporate mistakes happen when these three questions become blurred. Pressure to issue a statement leads to premature judgment, while postponing the assessment creates the impression that the company is hiding from an uncomfortable question. The real skill lies in maintaining its own timetable even as public pressure mounts, and communicating without saying more on any of the three questions than it intends to – or can substantiate.
There is both an internal and an external dimension to this. Externally, a bank, a major customer and an investor want to hear different things from the press, and none of them can be treated as though the others do not exist. Internally, employees want to hear from their leaders, not read about the issue in the newspapers. Those who have to represent the company in front of customers are in a particularly difficult position.
The stock market prices the loss; reputation remembers how it came about. When a file from decades ago emerges from the archives, a private past can become a company’s greatest business risk in a single day. It becomes part of the company’s balance sheet at a moment when the person concerned may no longer be able to offer a meaningful response. A company does not choose its state-security legacy, but how it responds to the crisis is entirely its own decision. That is what will ultimately determine how many customers stay, how many contracts are renewed and how stable its share price remains.
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Linda Kinstler / The New York Review of Books: ‘A Partial Freedom’: What Latvia Found in the KGB Archives
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