“Eyes across the
Atlantic—Hungary’s State Security and Canada’s Hungarians, 1956 –
1989.”*
International Conference on NKVD/KGB
Activities and its Cooperation with other Secret Services in Central
and Eastern Europe 1945 – 1989 (SÚZA, Bratislava, November 15,
2007)
This paper is a case study on how Hungary’s State Security agency
gathered intelligence on Canada, and especially on Hungarian Canadians.
Using archival sources stored at the Historical Archives of Hungarian
State Security in Budapest, this paper will show how Hungarian state
security attempted to infiltrate Hungarian-Canadian community
organizations, fraternal benefit organizations and newspapers, as
a way in which to monitor and gather information on Canada’s rapidly
growing Hungarian communities, and on Canadian society in general.
More than 38,000 Hungarians arrived in Canada as refugees in 1956-1957,
following the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. They joined
the 46,000 Hungarians who had immigrated to Canada since the beginning
of the twentieth century. Even before 1956, Canada’s Hungarian
communities were politically charged with the ideological conflicts of
the “old country,” namely the divide between those who subscribed to
nationalist, conservative and staunchly anti-communist beliefs, and
those who gravitated towards Communist and left-wing views more
generally. Each “camp” had its own community organizations, such as
affiliated churches, fraternal benefit societies, social organizations
and newspapers. These associations tended to maintain close ties with
sympathetic governments and political parties in Hungary. The political
activities of Canada’s oldest weekly newspapers—the staunchly
pro-Communist Kanadai Magyar Munkás (Canadian Hungarian Worker)
and the conservative Kanadai Magyar Újság (Canadian
Hungarian News)-- reflected this divide among Canada’s Hungarians.
These newspapers also demonstrated how, at different points in history,
ethnic organizations provided friendly authorities in Hungary with
information on the activities of one of the largest Hungarian
émigré communities in the Western world.
Hungary’s post-1945, Communist state security agencies—the ÁVO
and the ÁVH—had a keen interest in the activities of
Hungarian-Canadians, and especially those who were deemed to hold
“reactionary” and right-wing sympathies. This interest grew after
1956/57, with the rapid expansion of Hungarian communities in Canada,
the perceived increase in anti-Communist political activities and the
establishment of new organizations aimed at catering to the needs of
the “fifty-sixers.” There was widespread suspicion among anti-Communist
Hungarians in Canada that they and their organizations were being
monitored by people who collaborated with Hungary’s Communist
authorities. While some of these suspicions were unfounded, documents
preserved at the Archives of Hungarian State Security in Budapest
provide evidence that socialist Hungary did, in fact, turn to
informants to gain insight into the political activities of Canada’s
Hungarian communities. This paper will examine the “eyes and ears” of
Hungarian state security in Canada during the Cold War and will look at
the mechanism used to gather information on these communities, as well
as on Canada’s political activities in this period.
Christopher Adam
(Canada)
*Slovak translation: "Pohlady cez Atlantik – Madarská
štátna bezpecnost a kanadskí Madari, 1956 – 1989"