Hungary, Soviet Jewish Refugees, and the Making of a New Geopolitical Identity, 1989-1991

The paper seeks to highlight the special role of Hungary in the system transition of Europe in 1989-1991. Hungary served as a gateway for free mobility for several groups of citizens of the crumbling Soviet Bloc. It is well known how the country let GDR citizens emigrate to the West through its Western borders. Parallel with this, the country played an important part in the emigration of Soviet Jewry as a transit point. Between 1989 and 1991, more than 160,000 Soviet Jewish refugees transited through Hungary toward their emigration targets in the West and Israel. It was a closing act of the Cold War, as the U.S. and Israel lobbied throughout the Eastern Bloc to let their Jewish citizens emigrate freely. The paper aims to highlight the agency of the Hungarian elites in the “transition period” of the country in making this transit possible, concentrating on the joint program of the Malév Hungarian Airlines and the Jewish Agency to transport Soviet Jews through Budapest to Tel Aviv from Moscow, and the Hungarian political decisions attached to it.