diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 0aa9a113147..12813668ced 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -13,6 +13,9 @@ Core and Builtins
 - Issue #12326: sys.platform is now always 'linux2' on Linux, even if Python
   is compiled on Linux 3.
 
+- Accept bytes for the AST string type. This is temporary until a proper fix in
+  3.3.
+
 Library
 -------
 
diff --git a/Parser/asdl_c.py b/Parser/asdl_c.py
index 8a7f8aec7f4..249e18ddf42 100755
--- a/Parser/asdl_c.py
+++ b/Parser/asdl_c.py
@@ -805,7 +805,7 @@ def visitModule(self, mod):
 
 static int obj2ast_string(PyObject* obj, PyObject** out, PyArena* arena)
 {
-    if (!PyUnicode_CheckExact(obj)) {
+    if (!PyUnicode_CheckExact(obj) && !PyBytes_CheckExact(obj)) {
         PyErr_SetString(PyExc_TypeError, "AST string must be of type str");
         return 1;
     }
diff --git a/Python/Python-ast.c b/Python/Python-ast.c
index 8ba06ff39a4..89c07cd602d 100644
--- a/Python/Python-ast.c
+++ b/Python/Python-ast.c
@@ -611,7 +611,7 @@ static int obj2ast_identifier(PyObject* obj, PyObject** out, PyArena* arena)
 
 static int obj2ast_string(PyObject* obj, PyObject** out, PyArena* arena)
 {
-    if (!PyUnicode_CheckExact(obj)) {
+    if (!PyUnicode_CheckExact(obj) && !PyBytes_CheckExact(obj)) {
         PyErr_SetString(PyExc_TypeError, "AST string must be of type str");
         return 1;
     }