"There is a wide range of administrative measures, the measures of the internal affairs bodies. There are also degrees of this, house searches can be conducted in individual cases, traffic can be paralyzed, communications can be confiscated if they want, passports can be confiscated, the internal affairs department also has a thousand different methods that can be applied. And I say that the appropriate things are used expediently and continuously every day. And it is only at the end that someone is arrested and brought to court..." This is how János Kádár described the secret service at the service of power in 1982, including also the possibilities of internal prevention in relation to persons and groups opposing the system.
Gábor Tabajdi's new volume III/III. He reviews the operation of his group leadership in a thematic order, and along the internal logic of the system, he shows how internal prevention became the defining tool for the exercise of power in Kádár. During the proportional presentation of the individual departments of the department, the historian also outlines how political directives and cadre expectations became secret service measures.
The key concept of Tabajdi's analysis is disruption, which not only represents the main power-technical endeavor and the most frequently mentioned method of state security, but also presents the characteristics of Kádárism in a condensed and comprehensible manner in the operation of internal prevention. The cases described as illustrations clearly show that the state security tried to manipulate the activities of individual persons and autonomous groups with a wide variety of means, while often splitting life paths, destroying relationships of trust and eroding traditional social bonds, thereby decisively influencing the relations of Hungarian society following the regime change. too.