Editing State Protection Authority (section)

===Persecution by József Dudás' militia===
Attacks on the ÁVH became a significant activity only as informal truces developed between the student-controlled combat organisations and the Soviet troops in Budapest. Freed from the necessity of immediate combat, the [[József Dudás]] militia planned a series of reprisals against ÁVH officers, informants, and on a few occasions against ordinary Communist-party members caught up in the revolution.

On October 29, in the second week of the revolution, the Dudás militia attacked the headquarters of the secret police in Budapest, massacring the ÁVH inside. This event was well documented by both western and eastern journalists and photographers, and constituted the primary evidence against Imre Nagy and other members of his cabinet in the [[White Books]].
[[File:Protesters with body of AVH personnel.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Protesters kicking the body of a slain ÁVH soldier]]
A Western eyewitness said:

:<blockquote>The secret police lie twisted in the gutter [...] the Hungarians will not touch the corpse of an ÁVH man, not even to close the eyes or straighten the neck.</blockquote>

After Dudás' militia assaulted the building, the surrounding crowd [[lynching|lynched]] a number of ÁVH officers. Highly visible in photographs of this attack are the party's paybooks displayed on to the corpses, demonstrating that ÁVH soldiers received at least 10 times the [[wage]]s of a manual worker.

====Reaction of revolutionary forces to Dudás====
When the students' and workers' councils discovered what the Dudás group was doing, they instituted armed patrols to arrest and detain ÁVH members for their own safety, and for future planned trials. As a result of Dudás' massacres, and the students' policy of arrest, many ÁVH voluntarily turned themselves in to students' or workers' councils to seek protective custody. This was a reflection of the shared student-worker policy of keeping the revolution pure and bloodless. Dudás was sought for arrest by the students' and workers' councils.