text: Unofficial nobility The Communists took full control of the government between 1947 and 1949, and Hungary was proclaimed a "people's republic" on 20 August 1949. The aristocrats were declared as "class enemies", and most of them interned to "social camps"actually, forced labour campsto work in the fields in the Great Hungarian Plain. Mass internal deportations occurred in 1950 and 1951.  Almost all aristocrats were interned from Budapest to under-populated villages in eastern Hungary, primarily in Hortobágy region within two months in May–July 1951. Figures of a final report shows that 9 dukes, 163 counts, 121 barons and 8 knighted noblemen – altogether 301 aristocrats – and their families were deported from the capital during this period. The deportees were prohibited to leave the boundary of their assigned village and were under constant police surveillance. They were deprived of their belongings, properties and civil rights – they were prohibited to take part in elections. Most of them could work as manual workers in agriculture at state farms on a limited basis, but their deprivation was constant.
  Some leftist aristocrats tried to cooperate with the new regime but the Communist leaders did not trust them. As a consequence of the Khrushchev Thaw, those who had been interned were allowed to leave the labour camps, but their former homes were not restored to them. Although Communist historians did their utmost to prove the aristocrats' preeminent role during the failed anti-Communist Hungarian revolution of 1956, few aristocrats took an active part. Many aristocrats left the country following the suppression of the 1956 revolt. During the 1960s and 1970s, people of aristocratic descent were mainly employed as blue-collar workers, and their children needed a special permit for studying at universities until 1962. Although official discrimination was abolished, former aristocrats were rarely appointed to higher positions. Péter Esterházy (d. 2016) became a celebrated writer during the last decades of the Communist regime.