Patriots and Proletarians: Politicizing Hungarian Immigrants in Interwar Canada

H. Graham Rawlinson is a Ph.D. candidate in historyat York University
and a historical research consultant.

The 34,000 Hungarian immigrants who came to Canada between 1920 and 1940
make up only a small chapter in Canadian immigration history, but
Carmela Patrias has written a well-researched “chapter” about them
that is worth reading.

Like most immigrants, Hungarians were outsiders in Canadian society in
the interwar period. They found little opportunity to farm in the
increasingly crowded prairies, and work in the cities (especially during
the Depression) was scarce. Hungarian peasant migrants were also subject
to nativist prejudice from Canadians, who typically viewed southern and
eastern Europeans as among the least desirable of possible newcomers. As
a result, they turned to ethnic community groups to establish themselves
in their new surroundings.

But in describing these ethnic institutions, Patrias makes an
insightful observation: ethnic consciousness, especially when expressed
in a foreign land, is seldom devoid of political content. This is clear
in the case of the Hungarian communities she examines. Mutual aid
groups, churches, and nationalist organizations all either championed
the existing conservative Hungarian government or criticized it from an
avowedly communist perspective. Hungarian immigrants, Patrias argues,
were either patriots or proletarians.

The success of this book lies in its bold assertion that even modest
ethnic institutions are key agents of politicization, sometimes even
unknowingly. This point is amply proven, and it is one that historians
of Canadian immigration too often forget. More contentious is the
author’s emphasis on the handful of Hungarian elite immigrants, who,
according to this story, fought an ongoing battle for the sympathies of
peasant migrants. Their prominence in the narrative muffles the voices
of the peasants themselves, and probably simplifies the reality
somewhat, inasmuch as the possibility that immigrants might have shown
some allegiance to each of the rival ideologies is rarely considered.