A category of collaboration with the Ministry of Public Security (MBP), the Committee for Public Security and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MSW) in 1945–1960, and the forerunner of the secret collaborator; the lowest rung in the hierarchy of collaboration categories.
According to the glossary of the IPN Archival Inventory, informers gathered information and passed it to the Security Office (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa, UB) or the SB. Each had a personal file and a work file, corresponding to the later files of secret collaborators (TW). The category was governed by successive instructions of 1945, 1953 and 1955; in 1960 it was replaced by the secret collaborator.1,2
According to an article by Jacek Wołoszyn in “Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość” (Memory and Justice, published by the IPN), in 1944–1956 the agent network had three basic categories: informers, who reported on “hostile activity”; agents, who in addition infiltrated the circles under investigation; and residents, who each ran a set number of informers. A special variety was the cell agent network planted in prisons (see TWC).3
Sources
- Institute of National Remembrance, IPN archival inventory – Glossary, letter I (in Polish)
- Institute of National Remembrance, IPN archival inventory – Glossary, letter T (in Polish)
- Jacek Wołoszyn, ‘A sharp weapon’ – cell agents. Secret collaborators in prisons and detention centres in 1944–1956, ‘Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość’ 9/2 (16), 2010, pp. 295–337 (in Polish)
Checked: 4 November 2026