Hungarian Heritage Review, 1990 (19. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1990-01-01 / 1. szám
Indeed, it is hard to think of any Hungarian-Canadian leader of the 1920s immigration stream who did not have close personal ties to one or more of the provinces detached from Hungary. When the Canadian Hungarian Federation was formed in 1928, some of its top officers would be from this group of refugees; so were several of the most influential Hungarian-Canadian religious leaders of this period. Although the presence of so many newcomers from the detached Hungarian territories assured the prominence of “revisionist influences” in Hungarian- Canadian society, the Government of Hungary did not want to leave matters to chance and took pains to make sure that this spirit prospered among Canada’s Hungarians. Accordingly, contacts were established and cultivated with the conservative nationalist elements of Hungarian-Canadian society. These usually took the form of visits to Canada by Hungarian emissaries, often as a part of a larger North American tour. Among the Hungarian statesmen who visited Canada in the 1920s were Count Albert Apponyi and Baron Zsigmond Perényi. The former was Hungary’s most respected elder statesman, while the latter was a Privy Councillor and a friend of Regent Miklós Horthy. There were also several visiting church dignitaries and a few journalists. An important role in influencing opinion among the newcomers was played by the staff of the two Hungarian consulates in Canada, the main one in Montréal and the other in Winnipeg. Through these contacts, the authorities in Hungary tried to guide the politics of the Hungarian-Canadian ethnic group, and reinforce its revisionist sentiments. While most of the time Budapest’s efforts were confined to measures of persuasion, on a few occasions were direct methods were resorted to. One such step was the granting of a modest financial subsidy to the News of Winnipeg; another was the mediation which Baron Perényi undertook to resolve a quarrel between two major Hungarian-Canadian organizations in 1928. II The attempts of the Hungarian government to influence ethnic affairs overseas encompassed the United States also. In fact, there can be little doubt that the main target of these efforts was the much larger Hungarian community of the United States. In 1930, that ethnic group numbered 274,450 Hungarianspeaking immigrants and a similar number of secondgeneration Hungarian-Americans. There can be no doubt that the vast majority of these people were full of sympathy for Hungary, and agreed with the concept of treaty revision. The Hungarian-American community’s attempts to forestall the Trianon settlement, and later to achieve its international condemnation, have been documented by historians. Dr. Julianna Puskás relates how in 1919-20 Hungarian- Americans lobbied in Washington and elsewhere against the proposed treaty, and how all political factions denounced its provisions later. Although a fertile ground existed for revisionist sentiments among Hungarians in the United States, the situation there differed from that in Canada inasmuch as the leadership of the majority of Hungarian-American organizations remained in the hands of pre-1914 arrivals, or in those of second-generation Hungarian- Americans. Partly or perhaps even largely for this reason, the efforts erf the Budapest authorities to woo the Magyar communities of the United States, had limited success only. Although much money was collected from Hungarian immigrants for various causes pertaining to the welfare of Hungary and her residents, the expectations attached to the over half a million Hungarian-Americans by the government in Budapest were not achieved in their entirety. Nevertheless, when the Hungarian American Federation was revived in 1929 at a large gathering in Buffalo, a “revisionist” political platform was adopted, indicating the combined strength of these sentiments in Hungarian-American society, and the influence of Hungary’s elite over immigrant politics. Though the revitalization of a nation-wide umbrella organization of Hungarian-Americans should have filled many members of this community with at least a partial feeling of satisfaction, it may not have been enough to counteract the sense of disappointment that had been bequeathed to them by an incident a year earlier, the so-called Kossuth statue fiasco. The story of this regrettable event is familiar. It all started with a campaign to collect money to erect in New York, a giant statue of the hero of the 1848-49 Hungarian War of Independence. Some $40,000 were collected, a bronze statue was cast in Hungary and was shipped to the United States. It was dedicated in the midst of much fanfare and festivities. Unfortunately, the statue’s design proved defective and it had to be removed for repairs. Undoubtedly this experience was taken as a national humiliation by many Hungarians who felt that more effective measures had to be taken to call national and international attention to the plight of Hungary. From S.B. Vardy and A.H. Vardy (eds.) Triumph in Adversity: Studies in Hungarian Civilization in Honor of Professor Ferenc Somogyi (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1988). JANUARY 1990 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW 27
