Information Items

Series

3.1 linear meters (25 archival boxes)

This series consists of transcripts and summaries of interviews and reports. These reports, which were sent to the Munich headquarters from RFE’s ten Western European field bureaus, are based on interviews conducted with Hungarian immigrants and defectors in Western refugee camps and immigration offices or with Western travelers coming back from behind the Iron Curtain, and also RFE correspondence with anonymous sources from the socialist countries. Once they reached the Hungarian Unit, the reports were carefully checked for accuracy and plausibility. Only those reports which passed the various filtering systems were recommended as subjects for producing radio programs. The information items served as sources for the (in)famous Black Voice in the 50s, a program of the Hungarian Broadcasting Department which was aimed to become the "guilty conscience" of the nomenclature, local party leaders, directors of factories and of agricultural cooperatives, and to feature the oppressive regime on a personified, local level. The documents in this series give information on a great variety of topics relating to Hungary, from the communist party to prison conditions, from military issues to defectors, from economic problems to the reception of and reaction to the RFE broadcasts. Some of the individual documents were duplicated and interfiled within the Subject Files and the Biographical Files, respectively.

Not Expected

Arranged by numerical subject codes and thereunder chronologically

Not Restricted

Third party rights are to be cleared.

Arranged by Tibor Szigeti; described by Andras Mink and Csaba Szilagyi, January 26, 1999; revised by Csaba Szilagyi, April 11, 2002.