by Peter Fryer
Peter Fryer was sent to Hungary in 1956 to document what the British Communist Party considered to be a fascist uprising against Soviet rule. Instead he discovered a workers’ revolution being brutally suppressed by the Soviet regime.
Hungarian Tragedy documents what he saw, providing insight into the debates, creativity and heroism of the Hungarian revolutionaries. It is a testament to the capacity of workers to create a new world in the most oppressive circumstances.
Fryer's account of the Hungarian Revolution got him expelled from the British Communist Party, but it gave new life to the anti-Stalinist socialist movement around the world.