 He played a key role in the ethnic cleansing (deportation, in this case) of hundreds of thousands of German-speaking Hungarians from 1945 to 1946 as Interior Minister of Hungary.Nagy became prime minister in 1953 and attempted to relax some of the harshest aspects of Mátyás Rákosi's Stalinist regime, but was subverted and eventually forced out of the government in 1955 by Rákosi's continuing influence as General Secretary of the MDP.Nagy remained popular with writers, intellectuals, and the common people, who saw him as an icon of reform against the hard-line elements in the Soviet-backed regime.