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

Room 17. The Hungary of Trianon from the Election of the Regent to the Last Year of Peace (1920-1938). László Baják

"No construction without workers" (poster, 1922) and agricultural labourers, and undertook to support the government's targets in foreign policies (for instance, territorial revision). After this, Bethlen set to work at creating a stable government party. In an unexpected turn at the beginning of 1922, being unable to weaken the Smallholders' Party led by István Nagyatádi Szabó who had won the 1920 election, he and his followers joined the smallholders and reformed them from within. By denying suffrage to the uneducated, the ratio of citizens with voting rights dropped from the 1920 level of 40% to just 28.4%. Exclusion of unschooled women affected the Christian Socialists and the Chamber of the neo-gothic Parliament (designed by Imre Steindl), opened in 1902 (exhibition detail) Legitimists, while that of men without an education sensitively affected the Social Democrats and the Smallholders. After the election it was easy for Bethlen to shape the Smallholders into a right-wing party (the Unity Party). With the acceleration of the execution of the land reform, the dissatisfied Smallholders disbanded, at the same time succeeding in reducing the scale of the measures. In the course of the Nagyatádi-Rubinek reforms nearly one quarter of the total population, around 2 million people, came into the ownership of a few holds of land (1 hold

=0.57 hectares or 1.42 English acres), altogether 1,200,000 holds, which although it did not entirely resolve the land question proved to be an important social factor. In 1923 Bethlen managed to squeeze out of the party the extreme right, led by Gyula Gömbös, after which, treading in the footsteps of István Tisza, he made the house rules more strict in order to prevent any obstruction. The formation of the new domestic policy came to a close in 1926 with the reinstatement of the Upper House. In the modernised Upper House the aristocracy was pushed into the background, their place being taken by the leading office-holders of the civil state, such as the leaders of the chambers, the local