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

wing political bias meant that by 1948 approximately 50,000 persons had been brought before the people's courts for war crimes or crimes against the people, of which 189 were executed. One task of the series of procedures was to hold the officials of the old regime collectively responsible. The sentences, which were a contorted judgment of the interwar period, were born with an eye to legitimising the existence of the approaching communist regime. On March 15, 1945 a governmental decree announced the "abolition of the great estate system and the accession to land of the tiller of the soil", confiscated the estates greater than 1,000 cadastral yokes (1 = 1,42 acres), or later that part exceeding 100 holds, of those classified as one-time Arrow-Cross members or fascists, Volksbund members and those designated as war criminals. The land shared out under the direction of the "land claim committees" affected 5.6m cadastral yokes, or 35% of the land. Around 60% of this was received by one-time farm servants, agricultural labourers and "dwarf estate owners" (642,000 individuals), while the rest entered state, village and cooperative ownership. The majority of these new landlords was destitute, without state support, farming experience or agricultural implements, and from the start was at the mercy of the agricultural cooperatives modelled upon the Soviet kolkhoz. The previous great estate landlords fled, while the financial basis of the traditional gentry, those influential in national officialdom and the middlesize landowners who ran the counties was mopped up by land reform. The German troops were expelled by the Soviets on April 12, 1945, some units simultaneously looting and carrying off in masses the Hungarian population, raping girls and married women alike. The significant portion of those conscripted for what was originally a two-three tidying-up