Reports on the Hungarian Revolution, 1956

John Gollan (1911-1977) was a political leader and communist activist in Britain during the 20th century. Gollan joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1926 following his involvement in the General Strike of the same year. A close apprentice and confidante of Harry Pollitt, he was seen as the most appropriate and able person to take over his crucial role of General Secretary in 1956.

Gollan’s leadership became characterised by crises in both the international communist movement and in his party back home. His and others’ apologist attitude for the Soviet Union’s interventions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968) caused reputational damage to the CPGB and sowed deep divisions in the very fabric of the party. This collection, drawn from Gollan’s personal papers, attests to the slow decline of the CPGB as it increasingly lurched from firefighting international controversies to domestic irrelevance.

The collection is also accompanied by three contextual essays written by Professor Kevin Morgan.

This volume contains material relating to the Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Czechoslovakia and Vietnam, and their involvement with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Additionally, the volume contains John Gollan’s contact with the CPSU and notes on the Moscow ‘Show Trials’ from 1936-1938.

This document contains a copy of Charlie Coutts’ and Chris Birch’s first-hand report on Hungary written for John Gollan. The report outlines their experiences of Hungary’s uprising in 1956, including its vast implications for socialism in the region. The document also includes correspondence from Chris Birch on the provenance of the document written in 1996 and copies of material from “Istorichskiy Archiv” relating to its discovery in the Soviet archives in 1996. The material, written in 1958, concerns the events in Hungary, particularly the sentencing of politician Imre Nagy to his death.