After signing the document asking Soviet troops for assistance during the revolution on 24 October, the government and people overwhelmingly supported him handing power back to Nagy. He became the most hated man in Hungary and was advised to flee by Soviet ambassador Yuri Andropov to the Soviet Union along with other Hungarian hardliners such as Ernő Gerő. In Moscow, he worked as part of the philosophy department at the Soviet Academy of Sciences between 1957 and 1958. In the November 1956 the interim committee of the Communist Party expelled him, but by September 1958 he was able to return home.