Domján Dániel Ferenc: Kényszerpályák és külön utak. Hírszerzés, diplomácia és a magyar–jugoszláv kapcsolatok 1945–1956 - RETÖRKI Könyvek 48. (Budapest, 2022)
Summary
221221 Summary Hungarian-Yugoslav border. The papers of the Hungarian Embassy helped to nuance our knowledge about the period of the normalization, therefore it is shown in the book what kind of obstructive factors slowed the normalization between the two states. In the second part of the book a lesser-known aspect of the relationship has been shown: the history of the Hungarian Embassy in Beograd and the intelligence-war between the two states. The legation restarted its work in 1947, but the conflict has changed the daily life of the diplomats in Beograd because they had to work in a hostile environment. About the years 1950 and 1951 there are only a few papers in the archives and only one paper from 1953 gives an answer to this hiatus. According to it, one agent of the Hungarian military intelligence service who worked in Beograd destroyed all the papers by fire. In the document of the embassy became conspicuous that most of the diplomats were unprofessional and they didn’t speak foreign languages and this deficiency impacted the quality of their work and influenced the relationship of the countries. The Hungarian residency in Beograd worked between 1953 and 1956 but it didn’t function well. The agents of the residency couldn’t reach any result in the field of intelligence. It was not only their fault but the headquarters’ one in Budapest, too. In the book the organizational history of the Hungarian and Yugoslav state security services is presented and also compared. Unfortunately, there are only a few available literatures in the topic of the Yugoslav state security services, even so by the Hungarian documents about these services seems to be enough to picture its organizational history. I’m aware of the fact that in the future new papers can be presented about the Yugoslav state security services that will add more information about the topic. In the final chapter of the book the history of the lesser-known Zagreb trial has been presented. During the trial, three former KOS officer were convicted because they worked for the Hungarian services. Aranka Urbán was one of the main characters of the event, whose story is a sad example of how the conflict affected the life of the citizens. During the research of the papers, it became obvious that the state security services’ archive documents raise make more questions than they answer.
