• This source is actually two sources. They are telegrams sent by the same British official in secrecy from Hungary to the Foreign Office in London.
  
• It is one of a series of telegrams documenting the growing unrest in Hungary in the summer and autumn of 1956.
  
• The process began in June 1956. Various Hungarian Communist Party officials demanded that Hungarian leader Rakosi should introduce reforms. He refused, but Khrushchev failed to support Rakosi and replaced him with Erno Gero.
  
• Gero introduced some minor reforms but was in a difficult position. Hungarians wanting wide ranging reforms and freedom from Soviet interference in their country. British intelligence services intercepted telegrams from Moscow warning Gero and the other Eastern European states not to take reform too far, or to try and be too independent from Moscow.
  
• The protests continued in Hungary and spilled on to the streets. Students pulled down the statue of Stalin in the Hungarian capital Budapest on October 23rd 1956. These telegrams tell the story from that point. The Nationalists are the Hungarians rebelling against the USSR.