“They Were All Looking West”: Robert F. Byrnes’s Travel Report on Hungary in 1962

The primary source published here provides a rare and detailed account of a trip to state socialist Hungary in 1962, written by an American historian and expert on the Soviet Bloc, Robert F. Byrnes (1917–97). The document is prefaced by a short introduction that gives a brief presentation of Byrnes’s career and contextualizes his visit to Hungary as the representative of the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants.