Social composition and everyday life of Cominform emigrants in Hungary (1948-1980)

Abstract

As a direct but unexpected consequence of the outbreak of the Soviet–Yugoslav conflict, so-called Cominformist or ibeovci communities were established in the Soviet Union and in its Eastern European satellite states. Their community was organized in Hungary, too, at the turn of 1948–1949. The ibeovci emigrants in Hungary formed a rather small and closed community which was subject to many internal conflicts, personal rivalries, real and imagined grievances. Most of the emigrants arrived to Hungary from the neighbouring Yugoslav republics. Ethnically, the majority of them were Serbs, and socially, they originated from lower social strata. The majority of them originated from the countryside or were first generational town dwellers. The emigrants were also prone to serious hardship in their everyday lives, material and financial conditions, and accommodation. These problems were gradually solved by the mid-1950s. Still, in some aspects, the emigrants lived on at least the same level, or even above the level, of the everyday Hungarians. Stalin’s death and the slow and time-consuming process of normalization between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and consequent improvement of relations between Yugoslavia and Hungary resulted in the dissolution of the emigrants’ community in Hungary in 1954. The emigrants became marginalized and they lost justification for their further political activities, which raised many personal dilemmas. Most of the emigrants remained in Hungary and became apolitical, but a small fraction remained politically active even in the 1960s and 1970s.

Keywords

• Soviet–Yugoslav conflict
• Yugoslav–Hungarian relationships
• ibeovci emigrants
• Cominformist emigrants