Popular Music and the Secret Service in Hungary, 1945–1990 by Tamás Szőnyei

Popular Music and the Secret Service in Hungary, 1945–1990 by Tamás Szőnyei

This book is a result of decades-long research into declassified files, offering a unique perspective for writing post-Second World War cultural history through the lens of the political police.

This is the first in-depth, document-based monographic account of how secret services attempted to oppress dissent in popular music in post-war socialist Hungary. The documents reveal the goals, methods and means of the political police in their efforts to exercise control over the world of popular music, including musicians, fans and institutions. Through a series of case studies, the book sheds light on the activities of state security against various musical genres – ranging from jazz to beat, folk, religious music, rock, disco, punk, new wave and oi – and youth subcultures, such as hooligans, hippies, rockers, folk enthusiasts, punks and skinheads. The secret service operated following the resolutions and cultural policy of the communist party and employed a network of secret informants alongside its apparatus until the collapse of the regime in 1990.

Readers interested in a specific narrative of 20th-century pop and politics, culture and the Cold War, secret services and socialist countries, will find it essential reading. It will appeal to scholars and students of humanities, arts, music and European history, as well as professionals such as journalists, art historians, musicologists, musicians, curators, teachers and music lovers alike.

This is a fine contribution to popular music studiesIt is a report back from a journey through the archives of Hungary’s state security services and valuable for its insights into the problems that faced Hungary’s communist cultural policy makers as they sought to control young people’s music making. But it also reads, exhilaratingly, like a hallucinatory version of a pop story I thought I already knew, as it chronicles what happened to the flow of sounds, ideas and images across an iron curtain that was, in fact, always permeable.

– Simon Frith, Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Edinburgh

More so than any of its Warsaw Pact neighbours, Hungary developed an extraordinarily rich postwar popular culture – not for want of the state’s attempts to control or undermine it. Through his exhaustive readings of the secret police’s extensive archives,Tamás Szőnyei has pieced together a well informed examination of the many ways security officials coercively romanced, bullied and threatened the scene’s insiders, be they musicians, organisers or fans, into informing on their comrades, and how some resisted. Regardless of the state’s attempts to shape the music and minds of its people, not withstanding a few imprisoned neo-fascist punks in the 1980s, musicians came through and the culture was beginning to thrive by the time Hungary threw open its doors to the West.

– Chris Bohn, Editor-in-Chief, The Wire, formerly of the NME, for which he wrote about the Budapest scene in 1980: Hungarian Rhapsody And Other Magyar Melodies (NME, 17 January 1981)

Tamás Szőnyei’s book on popular music and the suppression of it in Hungary from the 40’s through the 90’s is a huge endeavor. His in depth research and stories tell of the power of rock n’ roll and how it existed under oppression and censorship. Rock n’ roll is an expression of freedom and the world’s connection to it is undeniable. Tamas’s extensive work to preserve and present this daunting history is so terribly important and needed in today’s world of hatred and conflict. We should all be grateful to his dedication and perseverance to put this book together. Peace and rock n’ roll!

– Joanna Stingray, first producer of Russian underground rock released in the United States. Author of the book: Red Wave: An American in the Soviet Music Underground (2020)

Tamás Szőnyei (1957) is a journalist and archivist, recently retired from the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security. He is the author of monographs on new wave music (1989, 1992) and, based on research into declassified documents, on the interaction of state security with rock music and literature, respectively (2005, 2012). He published an illustrated catalogue of his Hungarian new wave poster collection, along with that of a fellow collector, featuring studies by multiple authors (2017). He lives in Budapest, Hungary.