ABSTRACT
The Land Reform Decree of 1944 targeted the nobles; their landed estates were nationalized and subsequently divided among landless and poor peasants, or converted to state agricultural farms. Since land had for centuries been the cornerstone of the gentry's power, the main question this chapter strives to answer is how the gentry survived its expropriation. This chapter explores certain developments in the immediate postwar period were crucial to the gentry's survival. The war was followed by a period of social chaos and political uncertainty that inadvertently created an opportunity for the gentry to reconfigure their place in society. These circumstances laid the conditions for the disappearance of the gentry as a landowning class, but at the same time also for their endurance as a group. According to gentry's narratives, the psychological blow inflicted by land reform was often more damaging to their identity than the material losses.
