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ANALYSIS-East Europe's elite dogged by communist past
By Ian Geoghegan
BUDAPEST, June 20 (Reuters) - An admission by Hungary's prime minister that he was a communist-era counter-intelligence officer has rekindled painful debate in the former Soviet bloc over how to deal with public figures tarred by a communist past.
In the 12 years since the collapse of communism, hundreds of politicians in central and eastern Europe have been compromised by allegations they were paid state informers, snooping on friends, neighbours and colleagues.
Former communists are now crying foul and want an end to politically motivated blackmail and muck-raking.
Governments in the young democracies now heading into NATO and the European Union blow hot and cold on the issue, prompting periodic purges and vicious campaigns of personal denunciation.
Six years ago, Poland's social democrat Premier Jozef Oleksy was forced to resign amid charges he spied for the Soviet Union, and Gyula Horn, Hungary's socialist prime minister from 1994-98, came under pressure after admitting he had helped secret police.
Many Hungarians see any kind of former communist security work as a betrayal of a popular uprising, brutally crushed by the Soviet Union in 1956.
Peter Medgyessy's admission he worked for Hungary's secret services from 1977 to 1982 -- tasked with preventing Moscow from discovering plans to join the International Monetary Fund -- may now lead to secret police files being opened to the public.
Medgyessy's centre-left government, in office for less than a month, plans to change laws on classified secret service data to allow the naming of police informers involved in the loathed domestic surveillance during four decades of communist rule.
HALT POLITICAL VENDETTAS
Unlike the public unveiling of personal files held by the widely loathed Stasi and Securitate secret police in former East Germany and Romania, this move is aimed more at bringing a halt to political vendettas against individuals in public life.
"We're in the middle of a very dirty political game," said Gabor Kuncze, leader of the Free Democrats, junior partner in Hungary's coalition, adding the changes would "prevent further misuse of these (files) by politically motivated parties."
Hungary's Socialists claim the allegations against Medgyessy -- splashed in the rightist media -- aimed to divert public attention away from corruption investigations against former Premier Viktor Orban's defeated conservatives.
Most former Soviet bloc states have screening laws to make it more difficult for ex-secret service staff to hold public office -- in parliament, courts, the media and state agencies.
A background in espionage has proven no bar to advancement in post-Soviet Russia, however, where President Vladimir Putin is a former KGB spy who served in East Germany.
Soviet domination in Eastern Europe during the Cold War has left a sour taste in societies who resent the idea of Moscow's control over their own organisations.
In Poland, politicians found to have hidden a secret service past can be banned from public office for 10 years.
While Hungary moves to open up its files, Poland's Constitutional Tribunal this week rejected a bid by the ex-communist government to soften laws on public officials declaring past links with communist covert operations.
DRAGGING ON
"This is a very sad thing, which has been dragging for a very long time and has sprouted many intrigues, political tactics and manoeuvring," said a disappointed Oleksy.
But rightists proclaimed it good for democracy, preventing ex-communists from riding roughshod over the constitution and gaining personally from drawing a veil over the past.
"It was a law that clearly served the personal interests of some of those in government," said Lech Kaczynski, leader of the Law & Justice Party and a former Solidarity free trade union activist interned during Martial Law.
Drawing a distinction between communist agents, who spied on their fellow citizens, and counter-intelligence staff, Hungary's centre-left daily Nepszava said all files on all those who worked in all secret police activities should be opened.
Existing Hungarian law, passed soon after the fall of communism, only seeks to uncover former agents, not those in counter-intelligence. This was widely thought to have protected many deputies then from having to reveal past activities.
"In order to stop the use of such files against political figures in the future, a wide-ranging public disclosure is now needed," Nepszava said.
Ibolya David, a lawyer and leader of Hungary's centre-right Democratic Forum, also urged all pre-1990 secret service records to be opened, not just those of internal surveillance.
SOME THINGS ARE NECESSARY
"There are certain tasks that have to be carried out, be they in the secret service or in counter-intelligence. It's good if there are people to carry out these tasks. It's not so good if they later undertake a public role, in which this past will become an embarrassment," David told national radio.
A year ago, Bulgaria's commission on opening communist-era secret police files found that one in 10 MPs since totalitarian rule collapsed in 1989 had collaborated with the secret police.
Just to make it more difficult to grasp the nettle of openness and disclosure, experts warn many secret files have been doctored, or lost.
(Additional reporting by Pawel Kozlowski in Warsaw)
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