What was the visible evidence of the fact the people thought the Russians had gone for good?
CW: Well, people were enormously optimistic that life had changed. People kept talking about the ability… we can now travel, we can now read Western magazines, Western books. Everywhere in the country they Hungarian tricolour was flying with the middle torn out, the Communist emblem torn out. It was, seemed to be a completely liberated country. There was no sign of any opposition. The regime had virtually fallen apart. There were young men standing around public buildings with Tommy guns, who had disarmed and in some cases imprisoned the local Communist district secretary and staff and so on. And Hungary did seem to be a totally liberated country. And then we were in a town called Gyr in Western Hungary, interviewing the Resistance chief, who was a local government official, who had been a reformist Communist, who turned on us – this was two days after the British and French began fighting at Suez – and said, you’ve wrecked our revolution, the world will now look at the Middle East i
