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Re:Hungary: Communist-era files released, up to 60k former a... by jacquesm on Thursday November 05, 2026 @06:52PM (#50386279)
Interesting how long this took. Poland cleaned house almost immediately after they kicked the russians out.
Re:Hungary: Communist-era files released, up to 60k former a... by orbital-decay on Thursday November 05, 2026 @07:34PM (#50386621)
And in Russia itself it turned out to be one of the biggest subversions: in August 1991, Yeltsin famously and inexplicably stopped his followers on their way to the KGB building where all the archives were stored. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKpEu-62BBc

Re:Hungary: Communist-era files released, up to 60k former a... by holgerschurig on Friday November 06, 2026 @01:49AM (#50389023)
Same in East Germany. They made a government agency on 3. October 1990. This agency collected all the files related to people from the Stasi that weren't shredded.

And then any person (east or west) could file a request "Tell me anything the Stasi knew about me". "Stasi" being the abbrev of the political secret police of east germany.

But truth be told: no one kicked the russians out. Sure, economically the FRG was "kaputt". But with a stalinist USSR they could have continued to keep the status quo. Maybe even without help: North-Korea is way more "kaputt" than east germany was. And they keep up the system since decades without soviet help. And also without much chinese help. NK is pretty isolationist, with few bridges going over the border river to China. So it's entirely possible that socialist states 1) stay in their self-selected prison due to internal forces.

It was to a good part the goodwill of the then-USSR (lead by Gorbatchev) that made the USSR troops return. I think west-german money also helped --- they asked west-germany to build housing areas in USSR for the soviet soldiers.

1) And here I mean real socialism, centered around the ideas that the "means of production" not in private hand. Uneducated US people often confuse a simple unemployment insurance with "socialism". And call countries like Denmark, Sweden or France "socialist". This only tells all of us that the general education in some countries leaves to be desired ...

Re:Hungary: Communist-era files released, up to 60k former a... by jacquesm on Friday November 06, 2026 @04:03AM (#50389903)
And they did a fantastic job putting shredded documents back together, that was one of the most interesting technical stories of the day.
Re:Hungary: Communist-era files released, up to 60k former a... by lifestyleguru on Friday November 06, 2026 @05:09AM (#50390437)
> Poland cleaned house almost immediately after they kicked the russians out.

lol what? Quite the opposite.

Re:Hungary: Communist-era files released, up to 60k former a... by t0bia_s on Saturday November 07, 2026 @11:22AM (#50405786)
In Czechia we have formal agent of StB as prime minister (Andrej Babiš - "Bureš") and president was trained in military inteligence of Communist party (Petr Pavel - Pávek).

Ve called them "political turncoaters" (převlékači kabátů).

Re:Hungary: Communist-era files released, up to 60k former a... by lifestyleguru on Saturday November 07, 2026 @12:37PM (#50406374)
How dare you criticize the most handsome photographer.