Baják László Ihász István: The Hungarian National Museum History Exhibition Guide 4 - The short century of survival (1900-1990) (Budapest, 2008)

Room 19. From the Successes of Revision to German and Russian Occupation (1938-1945). István Ihász

Yugoslavia was only paid off by the post-1

956 Kádár government.) From the outset, the Soviet Union had a great influence over the development in Hungarian industrial production and foreign trade: based upon Hungarian-Soviet cooperation, the Hungarian-Soviet joint ventures established at the beginning of 1946 (MASZOLAJ, MASZOVLET, MESZHART, MASZOBAL) played the definitive roles in the production of aluminium, bauxite mines and oil wells, air transport and shipping. An institution peculiar to the transitional period was the national committee: the governmental decree of January 4, 1945 entrusted them with the restructuring and overseeing of local government and public administration. The Budapest National Committee set up a people's court which in the course of its operation, and as a result of emotions that had run wild in consequence of the war, often brought judgements of questionable severity against individuals declaimed as war criminals. An institution far removed from the Hungarian legal system, the national committee procedure set as its objective the break-up of the power of Hungarian society's former elite leadership, and served the interests of an alien power. The people's courts were made up of delegated lay judges from the Hungarian National Independence Front, made up from local branches of the four previous parties (the Smallholders, the Social Democrats, the Communists and the National Peasant Party) and the Trade Unions Council. Its strongly leftTitle deed from the land division of Spring, 1945, with the signature of Imre Nagy (HCP), Minister for Agriculture. The Hungarian Communist Party attempted to forge political capital by standing at the vanguard of the over-enthusiastic land reform announced in Debrecen and signed by every party