After Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian uprising in November 1956, an estimated 200,000 Hungarians—about 2% of the country's population—fled westward, most crossing the still-porous border into neutral Austria and a smaller number into Yugoslavia, before Hungarian authorities sealed the frontier. The refugees included many students, intellectuals, and skilled workers. The exodus prompted one of the first large coordinated international refugee resettlement efforts of the Cold War, with the newly formed UNHCR playing a central coordinating role and dozens of countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia, admitting Hungarian refugees under expedited programs.
Following the Soviet military suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in November 1956, roughly 200,000 Hungarians fled across the borders into Austria and Yugoslavia.
Hungary's population was about 9.8 million in 1956, rising to 9.98 million at the 1960 census. UNHCR and Austrian and Yugoslav border records counted roughly 180,000-200,000 people crossing into Austria and about 20,000 into Yugoslavia between November 1956 and early 1957, of whom the great majority were resettled in some thirty-seven countries within a year.
The exodus itself is not documented to have caused significant loss of life; UNHCR records that about 200,000 Hungarians crossed the borders (180,000 to Austria, 20,000 to Yugoslavia) and does not report deaths in flight. Deaths belong to the preceding Soviet military suppression of the revolution, conventionally estimated at roughly 2,500–3,000 Hungarians and several hundred Soviet soldiers, which is a separate event from the refugee movement recorded here.
Hungary, Austria, Serbia