The Files
The Files

Summary/Abstract: Our contact man then asked Deák whom he had voted for [at the 1968 US presidential elections]; he replied that he had cast his vote for Humprey [sic].” The “contact man” to whom the police had given the cover name “Perényi”, was an informer at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and he reported to a police lieutenant regularly in a secret apartment especially maintained for the purpose. On this particular occasion, as in other cases, the lieutenant wrote out a summary of the conversation, with ample quotes, and sent it to his superior at the Ministry of the Interior who evaluated the report as “highly informative”. (The department at which the report arrived was called “Interception of Internal Reactionary Behaviour and Sabotage—Field of Culture”.) The superior then instructed the lieutenant to order “Perényi” to continue his observations of my behaviour at the Institute at which I was, at that time, a visiting scholar from the United States. Needless to say, I was not the only one at the Institute whose “movements” the informer was expected to observe; nor was he the only one reporting. Among others, there was also “Vili”, who observed me diligently whenever I appeared in Budapest in the 1960s and early 1970s. But whereas “Perényi’s” identity is still a mystery, that of Vili is accessible to researchers at the Historical Archive of the State Security Services in Budapest, which contains my police files among thousands of others.[...]

• Details
• Contents