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The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: The Legacy of the Refugees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Nador F. Dreisziger
Nador F. Dreisziger*
Affiliation:
Royal Military College of Canada and co-editor of Hungarian Studies Review
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Extract

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 exerted a deep influence on the international communist movement and greatly affected the political and economic outlook in Hungary. A less well-known legacy of the uprising is what may be called the refugee experience, a momentous chapter in the history of human migration and resettlement. An examination of this experience reveals that the appearance of the Hungarian refugees in Western Europe and the New World greatly changed the development of Hungarian ethnic communities already in existence there, and that the refugees’ presence in the West continues to have lasting influence on relations between Hungary and the West.

In the past, Hungary has been both a source of refugees and a refuge for them. Many times in her history has she offered refuge to persecuted minorities and fugitives driven out of their own countries by war or other calamities. She has also sent her own refugees to the four corners of the world, after such events as the Rákóczi Uprising of the early eighteenth century, the War of Independece of 1848-49, the revolutions of 1918-19, and the Second World War.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Fall 1985 , pp. 198 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

1 A massive collection of studies on the consequences of the Hungarian Revolution is Király, B. K., Lotze, B., and Dreisziger, N. F., eds., The First War Between Socialist States: The Hungrian Revolution of 1956 and its Impact (Columbia University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

2 One of the best-known and most detailed accounts of the Revolution is Ferenc A. Vali's Rift and Revolt in Hungary: Nationalism versus Communism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961). A shorter, balanced and up-to-date account can be found in Bennett Kovrig, Communism in Hungary from Kun to Kádár (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979).Google Scholar

3 Szántó, Miklós, “Kivándorlás, emigráció, emigrációs politika” [Emigration, the emigrant experience, and emigrant politics], Társadalmi Szemle, 38, no. 5 (May 1982): 95.Google Scholar

4 Dirks, Gerald E., Canada's Refugee Policy: Indifference or Opportunism? (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1977), p. 203.Google Scholar

5 Szántó, , “Kivándorlás, pp. 95ff.Google Scholar

6 Adamovich, László and Sziklay, Oszkár, Foresters in Exile (Vancouver: The University of British Columbia, 1970).Google Scholar

7 Dirks, , Canada's Refugee Policy, p. 203. According to Dirks’ informants, one-fifth of the Hungarian refugees entering Canada were Jewish.Google Scholar

8 Dirks, , Canada's Refugee Policy, p. 195.Google Scholar

9 One of the most persistent advocates of a liberal admission policy was the influential Toronto Globe and Mail. See Dirks, Canada's Refugee Policy, pp. 193-99.Google Scholar

10 Canada, , Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Report of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 1959–1960, (Ottawa, 1960), pp. 30ff.Google Scholar

11 Adamovich, and Sziklay, , Foresters, p. 19.Google Scholar

12 For a more detailed discussion of this subject see Dreisziger, N. F. et al., Struggle and Hope: The Hungarian-Canadian Experience (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), pp. 208-10 and p. 218 n. 56.Google Scholar

13 Dreisziger, et al., Struggle and Hope, pp. 206ff.Google Scholar

14 Wipper, Audrey, “A Study of the Reactions of Hungarian Canadians to the Hungarian Crisis with Special Emphasis on Activities in the Toronto Region,” a Defence Research Board Study (Canada), MS (1958), pp. 95ff.Google Scholar

15 People who have written on this subject recently include Susan M. Papp-Zubrits and George Bisztray. S. M. Papp-Zabrits, ed., Hungarians in Ontario, special double issue of Polyphony, The Bulletin of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario. 2, nos. 2-3 (1979–1980): 45-50; and by the same author: “Oral History: Reflections of the Members of Three Waves of Hungarian Immigrants in Ontario,” in Roots and Realities Among Eastern and Central Europeans ed. Martin L. Kovacs (Edmonton: Central and East European Studies Association of Canada, 1983), pp. 155-164. George Bisztray, “Why 1956? Recent Cultural Changes in the Hungarian Canadian Community,” in Roots and Realities, ed. Kovacs, pp. 165-174.Google Scholar

16 For a few further observations see Bisztray, “Why 1956?” pp. 169, and Dreisziger, et al., Struggle and Hope, pp. 196-97, 226ff.Google Scholar

17 Personal observations and interviews with leaders of numerous Hungarian-Canadian organizations. See Dreisziger, et al., Struggle and Hope, chapter 7 passim.Google Scholar

18 Dödy, Paul, “Emigration from Hungary, 1880–1956,” in Dreisziger, et al., Struggle and Hope, p. 51. Professor Bisztray suggests that the “more individualistic aims” of the more recent arrivals might have been related to “an existentialist self-analysis” and the need “to cope with the loneliness of modern Western man.” See Bisztray, “Why 1956?” p. 170.Google Scholar

19 Dreisziger, et al., Struggle and Hope, p. 212. Also, Papp, Susan M., “The Organizational Development of the Hungarian Community of Ontario,” in George Bisztray and N. F. Dreisziger, eds., Hungarian Cultural Presence in North Amercia (Toronto: Hungarian Studies Review, 1981) pp. 90ff.Google Scholar

20 Dreisziger, et al., Struggle and Hope, p. 212; Bisztray, “Why 1956?” p. 167.Google Scholar

21 Canada, , Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census of Canada, 1961, vol. 1 pt. 3, table 127.Google Scholar

22 Census of Canada, 19612, vol. 1, pt. 3, table 127. Montreal's Hungarian population increased by more than 7,000, Vancouver's by 2,200 and Winnipeg's by 1,740.Google Scholar

23 Dreisziger, et al., Struggle and Hope, pp. 179–189 passim.Google Scholar

24 Kellner, Paul, Hungarian Participation in Canadian Culture (Royal Commission on Biculturalism and Bilingualism Research Paper, Ottawa, 1965), pp. 35ff. and 40.Google Scholar