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Abstract
Following the end of the 1956 Revolution, a significant number of university students fled Hungary and the human capital flooding into Austria drew the attention of universities worldwide. The cold war and its influence on international student organisations and on the domestic conceptualisation of refugees in the USA contextualise this case study of 18 Hungarian student refugees. Communist reform of the education system fuelled Hungarian student discontent; following the collapse of the revolution many students fled to Austria where student and non-government organisations in Austria and the USA worked to screen them. Student organisations sourced scholarships for the refugee students in the USA in tandem with philanthropic organisations. A parallel effort was developed involving covert CIA activities for information-gathering purposes. However, not all students were able to realise their ambitions and CIA activities raise questions around researcher integrity and the breaching of research ethics.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to the staff of the Open Society Archives in Budapest and also the Faculty of Humanities Social Science Journal Publication Scheme for funding completion of this paper.
Notes
1 Eighteen texts, and other materials, are used in this article from the Filerman File (FF), donated by Gary Filerman to the Open Society Archives in Budapest, Hungary, reference number HU OSA 412. The original texts, translated at the Joyce Kilmer Reception Centre in the USA, were referred to by number and gender; I have provided them with typical Hungarian names.
2 Karen M. Paget, Patriotic Betrayal (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 14.
3 Robert Sylvester, ‘Historical Resources for Research in International Education (1851–1950)’, in The Sage Handbook of Research in International Education, ed. Mary Hayden, Jeff Thompson, and Jack Levy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications), 17.
4 Institute of International Education, 39th Annual Report, 40 Years of Educational Exchange (New York: Institute of International Education, 1959).
5 Christopher Medalis, ed., Hungarian Refugee Students and United States Colleges and Universities, a Report on the Emergency Program to Aid Hungarian University Students in the US 1956–1958 (Budapest: Institute of International Education, 2006), 23.
6 Philip G. Altbach, ‘The International Student Movement’, Journal of Contemporary History 5 (1970): 161; Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 111–14.
7 Marguerite Kehr, ‘The International Program of the USNSA’, Journal of Higher Education 29 (1958): 317; Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 78–9.
8 Kehr, ‘The International Program of the USNSA’, 317.
9 Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 130–1.
10 Sigmund Diamond, Compromised Campus: the Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community 1945–1955 (New York: Oxford University Press 1992); Mathew Levin, Cold War University (Madison: Wisconsin University Press, 2013); Rebecca Lowen, Creating the Cold War University, the Transformation of Stanford (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1997); Christopher Simpson ed., Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences during the Cold War (New York: New Press, 1998).
11 Kehr, ‘The International Program of the USNSA’, 319–20.
12 Medalis, Hungarian Refugee Students, 24.
13 Susan Carruthers, Cold War Captives: Imprisonment, Escape and Brainwashing (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009).
14 Ibid., 48.
15 Ibid.; Carl Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate, the United States and Refugees during the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
16 Arthur A. Markowitz, ‘Humanitarianism versus Restrictionism: The United States and the Hungarian Refugees’, International Migration Review 7 (1973): 46–59.
17 Markowitz, ‘Humanitarianism versus Restrictionism’, 48–9.
18 Markowitz, ‘Humanitarianism versus Restrictionism’, 48; Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 85.
19 Peter Hidas, ‘The Hungarian Refugee Student Movement of 1956–57 and Canada’, Canadian Ethnic Studies, 30 (1998): 19.
20 North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Report on Hungarian Refugees, 17 April 1957 (Document C-M(57) 65), 9; Markowitz, ‘Humanitarianism versus Restrictionism’, 52; Bon Tempo, Americans at the Gate, 61.
21 Tony Kushner, Remembering Refugees, then and now (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 61.
22 Hidas, ‘The Hungarian Refugee Student Movement’.
23 Johanna Granville, ‘Of Spies, Refugees and Hostile Propaganda: How Austria dealt with the Hungarian Crisis of 1956’, History 91 (2006): 76–7.
24 Guy E. Coriden, ‘Report on Hungarian Refugees’, Studies in Intelligence 2, no. 1 (1958): 85; Richard M. Stephenson, ‘The CIA and the Professor: A Personal Account’, American Sociologist 13 (1978): 128–33; Justin E. Gleichauf, ‘A Listening Post in Miami’, Studies in Intelligence 44 (2001): 49–53.
25 Albert Simkus and Rudolf Andorka, ‘Inequalities in Educational Attainment in Hungary 1923–1973’, American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 742.
26 Elinor Murray, ‘Higher Education in Communist Hungary 1948–1956’, American Slavic and East European Review 19 (1960): 404.
27 Murray, ‘Higher Education in Communist Hungary’, 399.
28 Ibid., 404.
29 Murray, ‘Higher Education in Communist Hungary’, 399; James Mark, ‘Discrimination, Opportunity, and Middle-Class Success in Early Communist Hungary’, Historical Journal 48 (2005): 499–521.
30 Hidas, ‘Hungarian Refugee Student Movement’; Laura Madokoro, ‘The Refugee Ritual: Sopron Students in Canada’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 19 (2008): 253–78; Magda Czigány, ‘Just Like Other Students’: Reception of the 1956 Hungarian Refugee Students in Britain (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).
31 Medalis, Hungarian Refugee Students, 24.
32 World University Service Memorandum, December 17, 1956, FF.
33 Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 131, 410.
34 WUS Memorandum, December 17, 1956, 1.
35 Laura Gousha,‘“Extraordinary Measures”, The Funding of Hungarian Refugee Students by the Rockefeller Foundations, 1956–1958’ (MA dissertation, Central European University, 2011).
36 Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 175.
37 Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 55, 61–78, 130–1.
38 Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 177–8.
39 The President’s Committee for Hungarian Refugee Relief. A Manual of the Policies and Procedures Followed in Connection with Hungarian Refugee Resettlement (1957): D-2, FF.
40 Ibid., G-7.
41 Sylvia Csűrös Clark, Judit Hajnal Ward, and Molly Stewart, ‘Eyewitness to History: Follow up on the Hungarian Scholar Program at Rutgers University’ (paper presented at the American Hungarian Educators Association Conference, Rutgers University, May 2–5, 2013).
42 Manual of the Policies and Procedures, G-9.
43 Medalis, Hungarian Refugee Students, 14.
44 Coriden, ‘Report on Hungarian Refugees’, 87.
45 Guy E. Coriden, ‘The Intelligence Hand in East–West Exchange Visits’, Studies in Intelligence 2, no. 3 (Summer 1958): 63–70.
46 Coriden, ‘Report on Hungarian refugees’, 87.
47 Ibid., 90.
48 Gleichauf, ‘A Listening Post’, 51.
49 Joseph S. Roucek, ‘Education of the Refugee in the United States’, International Review of Education 4 (1958): 379; Murray, ‘Higher Education in Communist Hungary’, 406; Thomas A. Sebeok, ‘Uralic Studies and English for Hungarians at Indiana University: A Personal View’, Hungarian Studies 7 (1991): 151; Coriden, ‘Report on Hungarian Refugees’, 91; Gousha, ‘Extraordinary Measures’.
50 Gousha, ‘Extraordinary Measures’; Roucek, ‘Education of the Refugee’, 379.
51 WUS Memorandum, December 17, 1956, 4.
52 Roucek, ‘Education of the Refugee’, 379.
53 Czigány, Just Like Other Students.
54 WUS Memorandum December 17, 1956, 2.
55 Manual of the Policies and Procedures, G-9.
56 WUS Memorandum, December 17, 1956, 4.
57 Interviewer’s comments, February 26, 1957, FF.
58 Ibid.
59 WUS Memorandum, December 17, 1956, 4.
60 Roucek, ‘Education of the Refugee’, 379.
61 Sebeok, ‘Uralic Studies’, 150.
62 Sebeok, ‘Uralic Studies’, 151–2.
63 Student letter 3 July 1957, FF.
64 Student letter, February 26, 1957, FF.
65 Letter, Visit to Earlham College, University of Illinois and Elmhurst College, March 25, 1957, FF.
66 Letter, Visit to Temple University and University of Pennsylvania, March 13, 1957, FF.
67 Letter, Visit to Earlham College, University of Illinois and Elmhurst College.
68 Medalis, Hungarian Refugee Students, 22.
69 Filerman, Letter to Interfraternity Council, June 14, 1957, FF.
70 Medalis, Hungarian Refugee Students, 15.
71 Memorandum, September 20, 1957 (University of Minnesota), FF.
72 Medalis, Hungarian Refugee Students, 31.
73 Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 176.
74 Undated student letter to USNSA:1, FF.
75 United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. New York: General Assembly Official Records: Eleventh Session Supplement No. 18 (A/3592), 1957.
76 Nándor Dreisziger, ‘The 1956 Hungarian Student Movement in Exile: An Introduction’, Hungarian Studies Review XX (1993): 104; A Magyar Diak, FF.
77 Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 181.
78 Paget, Patriotic Betrayal, 184.
79 Louis Greene, ‘About People’, The American Jewish World, March 29, 1957, FF.
80 Student letter, May 26, 1957, FF.
81 Hidas, ‘Hungarian Refugee Student Movement’, 19.
82 Ibid.
83 Medalis, Hungarian Student Refugees, 16.
84 Filerman, Letter, Visit to Ohio State University 25 March 1957, FF.
85 Medalis, Hungarian Student Refugees, 23.
86 Medalis, Hungarian Student Refugees, 29.
87 Institute of International Education, 39th Annual Report, 16.
88 Joseph Berger, ‘A Reunion of Refugees, Class of ’57’, New York Times, February 21, 2007.
89 Czigány, Just Like Other Students.
90 Carruthers, Cold War Captives.
91 Michael Warner, ‘Review of The Mighty Wurlitzer’, Studies in Intelligence 52 (2008): 71.
92 Coriden, ‘Report on Hungarian Refugees’, 91.
93 Stephenson, ‘The CIA and the Professor’, 128–33.
94 Stephenson, ‘The CIA and the Professor’, 131.
95 Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne and János M. Rainer, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002), 189.
96 Gleichauf, ‘A Listening Post ’, 51.
97 Jana K. Lipman, ‘A Refugee Camp in America: Fort Chaffee and Vietnamese and Cuban Refugees, 1975–1982’, Journal of American Ethnic History 33 (2014): 57–87.
98 A. J. von Lazar, ‘1966. Class Struggle and Socialist Construction: the Hungarian Paradox’, Slavic Review 25 (1966): 310.