AHC Immigration to East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary from Turkey and S. Europe

Your challenge is to have a significant number of people (mostly poor I guess) from Southern Europe, Turkey and Iran immigrate to these East Block countries in the 1970s and 1980s to better their lives.
Bonus points if a significant number of people from places like the U.K. and Austria also move to the East.

In OTL, there was some immigration from non-Communist countries to Hungary at least, for example a doctor in my small hometown in Eastern Hungary was an Arab in the 1980s and my mom had an Argentinian middle school classmate of Hungarian descent from Buenos Aires who moved to Hungary with his family in 1980.
 
IIRC if you were Marxist you could move into the E Bloc/USSR but unless you were, they weren't going to welcome you in.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Why would they move to political oppression and dead economies when you have the West? The only way you can increase immigration significantly is somehow the Iron Curtain being a lot further East, or a particularly nutty brand of Communism in Turkey. Perhaps a lot of ethnic tension in Yugoslavia when the Soviets are too weak to respond leads to a massive crisis and mass emigration.
 
One way I think this could've worked is for West Germany not start the Gastarbeiter program in the 50s.

Communist or not, Eastern Europe had a normal (or at least tolerable) standard of living. Tapwater and Wellwater was potable, safety on the streets was good, there was a free healthcare system, power and heating (either centralized or natural gas) was available in most homes from the mid-60s, you could live in the same manner as a Western European, just poorer.

I doubt there would've been no people in rural Turkey, Iran, or isolated, rundown places in Southern Europe who wouldn't have been attracted to a more stable life in these countries, if immigration to West Germany was not available.
 
There actually was substantial migration into east-central Europe during the later Cold War. East Germany may have been the most important destination owing to that country's perennial labour shortages, but Czechoslovakia and Poland were also significant destinations. Communist countries like Cuba, Angola and Mozambique were sources, but Vietnam was the most notable source of migrants.

The case of the Vietnamese diaspora inhabiting such countries as Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany indicates that the picture of socialist societies as lacking transnational mobility is to a large extent simplified, as transnational movements of people existed during the Soviet Bloc era on a quite significant scale. From the 1950s until the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, symbolised by the year 1989, tens of thousands of Vietnamese people arrived in such countries as the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the former GDR in order to study and gain occupational training. Hundreds of thousands worked in factories as ‘guest workers’ in the 1980s – especially in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the USSR (Alamgir 2014; Schwenkel 2014). Their work was profitable for the Eastern European countries, in need of a cheap labour force, but alsoplayed the role of developmental aid to Vietnam, as the workers commonly helped their families living in impoverished Vietnam by sending remittances (mainly consumer goods) (Schwenkel 2014). Susan Bayly (2007) introduced the notion of ‘global socialist ecumene’ to describe the transnational flow of ideas, knowledge and cultural artefacts transmitted by students and specialists circulating among particular communist countries. Particular categories of Vietnamese – assessed as loyal to the communist authorities and promising in terms of educational outcome – participating in governmental exchange programmes were enabled to participate in the transnational mobility taking place within the area of ‘ecumene.’

Considering the importance of this communist era transnational movement for further establishment of migrant groups, it must be remembered that, according to the principles of government programmes, ‘socialist mobility’ was intended to be only of a temporary nature. After completing education or work, the Vietnamese were supposed to return to Vietnam. Students were subjected to the strict control of the Vietnamese authorities and were not allowed to maintain closer relations with representatives of the receiving society. The control was especially strict until the mid-1970s – the end of the Vietnam War. Settling in Eastern European countries was very difficult for them – although not completely impossible, as isolated cases of people staying in Europe have happened since the beginning of the emigration. In the case of students from Poland, changing temporary immigration into a permanent state gradually became more available as early as the 1980s due to the relaxation of the policies of both states – Vietnam and Poland. However, the ‘guest workers’ in such countries as East Germany and Czechoslovakia were subjected to strict control until the end of communism.


You would not get substantial numbers of migrants to east-central Europe from southern Europe or Turkey or Iran, not as long as these countries were not reliably Communist and (in the case of southern Europe) not as long as southern Europeans could enjoy a higher standard at home than in east-central Europe. Migrants from elsewhere, though, were possible.
 
There actually was substantial migration into east-central Europe during the later Cold War. East Germany may have been the most important destination owing to that country's perennial labour shortages, but Czechoslovakia and Poland were also significant destinations. Communist countries like Cuba, Angola and Mozambique were sources, but Vietnam was the most notable source of migrants.

Now this is very interesting! Do you know of similar flows into the Soviet Union, and if so, from where and how large were these flows?

I have been trying to figure out how one might get significant migrant flows going into the Soviet Union. I figured it was plausible to get flows moving from less developed Soviet allies like Vietnam, Ethiopia and maybe Iraq and Syria starting in the 80s (perhaps with a special emphasis on encouraging immigration of Christians from those countries, as a means of offsetting the faster growth of the USSR's Muslim population in the regime's mind). I further figured that it would be plausible that the USSR would experience similar levels of immigration as equivalent middle-developed Latin American countries (Argentina's economy, for example, has an overall performance that parallels the Soviet Union/Russia quite nicely), which would result in immigration levels between 300,000 to 1,400,000 people per year entering the country.

That's all supposition based on possibly flawed comparisons to capitalist states though - I'd really love to get more actual data on how migration worked in the Soviet block.

fasquardon
 
I am unaware of any inflows into the Soviet Union, perhaps apart from Vietnamese. The Soviet Union lacked the labour shortages of its more developed and demographically mature satellites in east-central Europe: its domestic labour supply was enough. Migration, for the Soviet Union, was an internal phenomenon, people moving to wealthier areas and to cities and to labour-hungry regions.

I do not think capitalist states would provide good analogies for the Cold War-era Soviet Union. Among other things, borders and migration flows were much more tightly regulated. The idea of selectively recruiting members of the Christian minorities in Syria and Iraq seems unlikely, given the lack of ethnic relationship between these minorities and almost all of the populations of the Soviet Union. Even the Armenians of Syria were loath to go to the Armenian SSR in large numbers.

The Polish/East German frontier was never as permeable as the Dutch/West German frontier, Warsaw Pact and Comecon aside--cooperation was between states. Poland might well have been of use as a source of workers for East Germany and Czechoslovakia, but leaders in none of these three states wanted to compromise their sovereignty further by establishing a unified labour market, and Solidarity killed the prospect of migrant flows. Vietnamese migrants were relatively prominent at least partly because they came from far away, they could be easily isolated, and their country was not a potential threat.
 
Vietnamese migrants were relatively prominent at least partly because they came from far away, they could be easily isolated, and their country was not a potential threat.

Ahhh. An excellent point. I suppose that would make Africa a more likely source of cheap labour for Soviet planners than the Middle East.

Even the Armenians of Syria were loath to go to the Armenian SSR in large numbers.

Did the Soviets try to entice Syrian Armenians to move to the USSR in OTL?

Among other things, borders and migration flows were much more tightly regulated.

Indeed. The whole nature of the planned economy would mean that utilizing foreign inflows of labour would require planners to plan for it, arrange for vacancies or entire facilities to be staffed with foreign labour, contact the planners in the source country to arrange things etc...

The Soviet Union lacked the labour shortages of its more developed and demographically mature satellites in east-central Europe: its domestic labour supply was enough.

The Soviet Union had a sucking labour shortage actually. Though it's true that this was mostly an artifact of the system, due to enterprise managers hording labour just like they horded other production inputs (resulting in inefficient labour allocation).

fasquardon
 
Ahhh. An excellent point. I suppose that would make Africa a more likely source of cheap labour for Soviet planners than the Middle East.

Maybe?

Did the Soviets try to entice Syrian Armenians to move to the USSR in OTL?

There were efforts to attract Armenians from the diaspora after the Second World War, a hundred thousand people mainly from the Middle East settling here.

Indeed. The whole nature of the planned economy would mean that utilizing foreign inflows of labour would require planners to plan for it, arrange for vacancies or entire facilities to be staffed with foreign labour, contact the planners in the source country to arrange things etc...

This was manageable in the relatively well-off states of east-central Europe, where the foreign labour was necessary, but elsewhere ...[/QUOTE]
 
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There were efforts to attract Armenians from the diaspora after the Second World War, a hundred thousand people mainly from the Middle East settling here.

Hmm. So according to wikipedia "[a]n estimated 150,000 Armenians immigrated to Soviet Armenia between 1946 and 1948". That's a good sized wave for only 2 years. (And especially considering the Stalinist mistreatment of the immigrants - in a usual migration wave, the first wave pioneers writing back to their families that encourages the next, larger, wave to come - from the sound of the wikipedia entry, it doesn't sound like Stalin allowed so much communication.)

fasquardon
 
And, come to think of it, there was also a substantial movement of Finnish immigrants from Canada and the United States to Soviet Karelia in the interwar period. That ... did not end so well.
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Turkey joins Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets win anyways, expanding the Armenian and Georgian SSRs at the expense of Turkey, creating a new Kurdish SSR, and installing a communist puppet state over the rest of Turkey. The straits are placed under permanent Soviet military occupation. At the same time, the Stalin decides that he doesn't want to leave Iran and keeps the part of that he occupied under a communist puppet government (after expanding the Azeri and Kurdish SSRs into what was once Iran). Greece also ends up communist (either because the Soviets reached it or the communists win the civil war). Now that Greece, Iran, and Turkey are under communist control significant amounts of their population emigrate to other Eastern Bloc countries.
 
Czechoslovakia was took app 30000 Vietnamese guest workers in early 80-ties. Another 20000 after 1985. In 79-ties it was app 1200 a year but many were students.

Czechoslovakia was utilizing workers from Poland as well as Yugoslavia mostly based on contracts with companies from their home countries.
Di not have numbers though.

Czechoslovakia also took around 12000 Greek refugees after civil war there.

Students from Arab and African countries as well as Afghanistan, Korea and Vietnam were common.
There is big Vietnamese community in Czech republic app. 65000. I believe in Czech republic they got status of national minority. In Slovakia app 5000.
 
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