Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
‘FABULOUS’ IN HUNGARY - Sympathetic journalism
'FABULOUS' IN HUNGARY commander, and as the head of various factories. He was a member of the leadership of the Central Antifascist Committee. At the time, he was recruited by the loyal Comrade László Köves on behalf of NKVD, who believed Rojkó to have been working very efficiently.”348 It is interesting that László Köves’ name as the officer of the NKVD also surfaced during the investigation against Hoffmann, albeit indirectly, as Köves was an old illegal communist who joined the underground movement back in 1928 in Frankfurt am Main. He went to Paris from Frankfurt but settled down in Moscow with his parents in the early 1930s at the recommendation of Comintern. Over the coming years, he served the Soviet Union in a number of positions, including as a political warden in several prisoner of war camps, where he came into contact with Ervin Rojkó. After the war, he served until 1948 as a member of the Soviet state security corps, returning home to work as an officer from 1949 first at the Military Policy Department of the Ministry of Defence, and later at its successor, MNVK-2, until the mid-1950s. The Ministry of Interior then requested the transfer of the tried-and-trusted officer to their own ranks and appointed him secret secretary of the Hungarian Embassy in Moscow from 1955 to 1957.349 From 1957, he headed the Protocol Department of the Ministry for Foreign Trade, which happened to coincide with the period when the foreign trade lobby, the subject of this book, was established and strengthened.350 Köves had therefore already recruited Ervin Rojkó, who returned from the Soviet Union in 1947, to state security during his Soviet captivity. Officially, however, the Hungarian agency employed the journalist recruited as a patriot only from January 1956.351 He was assigned to the surveillance of persons suspected of being spies, which he was successful in doing until the revolution broke out. During the last days of October, his state security dossier was destroyed,352 so we have no documents 348 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O-12344/7-a p. 239 Recommendation, 12 July 1963 349 ÁBTL 2.8.2.2. p. 80 Personal dossier of László Köves p. 11 Curriculum vitae, 10 December 1962 350 ÁBTL 2.8.2.2. p. 80 Personal dossier of László Köves p. 3 Assessment sheet, 10 May 1960 351 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O-12344/7-a p.240 Recommendation, 12 July 1963 352 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O-12344/7-a p. 246 Summary report on the agent with code-name ‘ Reményi’ 25 July 1963 131
