soon took steps to abolish the MSzMP, and by 1927, the party existed in name only. For the remainder of the interwar period, the internal leadership of the KMP beyond Kun fluctuated tremendously, and membership was minuscule. After the deadly derailment of a passenger train at Biatorbágy by Szilveszter Matuska in 1931, the government declared martial law and used the opportunity to arrest suspected communists. Two of those arrested, and the leading party members Imré Sallai and Sándor Fürst, were executed the following year. The KMP was damaged to the point that the Comintern dissolved it in 1936. Further throwing the communists into disarray were the inconsistent policies of the Comintern throughout the 1930s, which culminated in the 1939 Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact and the abandonment of the Popular Front tactic, which had marked communist ideology for the last decade. Besides, Stalin's purges in the late 1930s had taken a heavy toll on the Hungarian émigrés in Moscow. World War II and Communist takeover The KMP entered the 1940s a shell of what it once was. In late 1941, following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, the Central Committee advised Party members to work with non-Communist resistance groups in order to present a united anti-German front. This prompted the KMP to attempt to re-establish itself as a legal entity in Hungary, despite the Horthy government's alliance with Nazi Germany. This movement was quickly put to an end, however, as mass arrests in 1942 effectively destroyed the leadership of the KMP. This, coupled with the dissolution of Comintern in 1943, spelled the end of the KMP as a functioning party for the time being. In an effort to continue their actions, Hungarian Communists under János Kádár founded a new party, dubbed the Peace Party, as a replacement for the KMP. This designation lasted until late 1944, at which point the Peace Party reverted to its designation as the Communist Party. By this point, Horthy was frantically trying to end Hungary's role in the war. Attempts to scale back the involvement on the German end failed, and so, with the Red Army approaching the country's borders, Horthy tried to declare Hungary a neutral state. The move backfired horrendously; the Arrow Cross Party forces seized the capital, took power, and set the stage for a four-month battle that claimed thousands of lives and left Budapest in ruins. The city was finally liberated in February