 In 1949 he and O.G.S. Crawford resigned as Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries in protest at the election of James Mann to the Presidency following the retirement of Cyril Fox. They believed that Mann, Keeper of the Tower's Armouries at the Tower of London, was a poor choice and that Wheeler, an actual prehistorian, should have won the election. In 1952 a group of British Marxist historians began publishing the periodical Past & Present, with Childe joining the editorial board. He also became a board member for The Modern Quarterly (later The Marxist Quarterly) during the early 1950s, working alongside old friend, the Communist leader, Rajani Palme Dutt, chairman of the board. He authored occasional articles for Palme Dutt's socialist journal, the Labour Monthly, but disagreed with him over the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; Palme Dutt defended the Soviet Union's decision to quash the revolution using military force, but like many western socialists, Childe strongly disagreed. The event made Childe abandon faith in the Soviet leadership, but not in socialism and Marxism. Childe retained a love of the Soviet Union, having visiting on multiple occasions and having been involved with CPBG satellite body the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR, and serving as President of their National History and Archaeology Section from the early 1950s until his death.
