Tiphaine Robert. Des migrants et des revenants: Une histoire des réfugiées et réfugiés hongrois en Suisse (1956–1963) [Of migrants and returnees: a history of Hungarian refugees in Switzerland, 1956–63]

Abstract

Emigration, immigration, return. Tiphaine Robert does migration history a great service by examining, in one study, three key aspects of mobility. It is a tale of flight, of courage, of the woes of immigration and settlement, of nostalgia, and ultimate return for some, all underscored by the context of the Cold War. As with many migration stories, the geopolitics of the period affected both the choices migrants made in the contexts in which they found themselves and the ways in which they were portrayed.Emigration. Of the 200,000 Hungarians who left Hungary after the 1956 Revolution and its Soviet repression, some 67,000 went to North America; some 47,000 chose the United Kingdom, Germany, or France; and another 11,000 went to Australia, according to the UNCHR statistics.1 The book begins with the well-known history of the insurrection that led hundreds of thousands to flee, but Robert carefully reminds us that Hungarians had been emigrating since the nineteenth century; and, in the previous decade, many had already left after the war and again during the initial period of Stalinization (1948–53). These early leave-takers would have an important role in welcoming the fifty-sixers. However, in what is an ongoing tale of our times, Robert then delves into the fascinating and always-complex ways of how emigrants chose/were chosen for their ultimate destinations. As she perspicaciously notes, an initial “solidarity of circumstance” for “model exiles” that created an unconditional welcome for anti-Communists evolved toward a process of selection, undergirded by elements of suspicion.After first crossing the border to Austria or Yugoslavia (two ideologically different way stations), the fifty-sixers then scattered to destinations around the world. One of the strengths of Robert’s book is showing the difficulties of this initial period, when a variety of expectations and the uncertainty of destination meant hard choices which would have important consequences. An idealized image of America, here as in other places and other times, was strong; the United States was the focus of much waiting and often dashed expectations. After much hesitation, the United States finally accepted some 40,000 Hungarian refugees. Anti-communism there as elsewhere played a large role in the imagery and acceptance of the Hungarian immigrants, but so did the favorable economic context of the 1950s, as Robert also reminds us.Immigration. Some 13,000 Hungarians initially went to Switzerland, making it the country that welcomed the most Hungarians in proportion to its population in 1957. Several thousand moved on to other countries, while a relatively large proportion of those refugees who didn’t continue on opted to return home.The history of Hungarians’ immigration to and settlement in Switzerland is one of a “conditional compassion,” as Robert puts it, due to an aversion to Communism. But it was also, as she and others have added, a form of “humanitarian rattrapage” (remedial catching up), to assuage guilt over criticisms of what Switzerland did or rather did not do (enough) during World War II. What is particularly new here is a focus not just on policy but on the refugees themselves. In this regard, much of Robert’s story of Hungarians in Switzerland is one of immigration writ large, with its problems of leaving (the trauma of precipitated departures for refugees and the drama of separation), arrival, getting settled, finding a job, learning a new language, and adapting—or not.With the opening up of the archives, Robert has interestingly found that not all Hungarian immigrants of the time were political refugees per se. Yet the geopolitical context of the Cold War looms large, with regard to the material circumstances of immigration but also, as Robert well shows, in the ways in which the fifty-sixers were depicted. As seen in Switzerland and more generally in the West, they were refugees from Communism and proof of the evils of the regime. The perspective from the East was the opposite: they were traitors to the cause. Faithful to the official Hungarian point of view, the Swiss Communist Party (La voix ouvrière) criticized the Hungarian emigrants and encouraged them to return home.Return, the “revenants.” Historians of migration have long speculated on different reasons for return, a topic still too little studied.2 How then to account for those who went back to Hungary? Robert estimates that some 2,000 refugees returned in the period from 1956 to 1963. Why? Disappointment; nostalgia for home and culture; missing family, a spouse, or a lover. The focus on the migrants (through archival sources, the press, and oral interviews) reminds us that a history of emotions can enrich political history. But the political imagery itself remains strong. Both sides of the Iron Curtain were aware that such returns troubled the initial images of emigration and settlement. In Switzerland, return was “politically unthinkable” (as Katy Long has put it), in that it contradicted cheery stories of arrival and settlement there. But if this reverse migration was unimaginable in the “free world” and minimized or ignored in Switzerland, the returnees were welcomed, encouraged, and hailed (indeed used in propaganda) in Hungary. As Robert well shows, the phenomenon of return was as much a case of individual choice as a political act. It, too, was not always “successful.” But for others it was a homecoming where emotions trumped politics.Robert’s book adds to our knowledge in several fields, from migration studies to the Cold War, not to mention both Hungarian and Swiss history. The “revenants” need to be added to any mobility reading list.