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The growth of independent walking movements ceased in 1944 when the Germans deposed the Regent, Miklós Horthy, and handed power to the Hungarian Fascist party, the Arrow Cross. After the war the Communist regime disbanded all the pre-war walking clubs whether ‘bourgeois’, rightist (some clubs had had members active in the Arrow Cross) or socialist. A new organisation, the Magyar Természetbarát Szövetség (Union of the Hungarian Friends of Nature), was set up on the Soviet model in 1949. To add to the confusion (or perhaps encourage the idea that the new organisation was a continuation of the more politically acceptable pre-Communist Union of Hungarian Walkers with the same acronym), the Friends of Nature organisation was called the MTSZ.

Between the wars about 50 walking hostels had been built by the efforts of members of various walking clubs, but when the Communists gained power they were collectivised. This was a particularly bitter blow to the members of the disbanded working-class clubs who had struggled hard to find the resources to build the hostels. Unfortunately the state tourist agency had no long-term interest in the buildings and many hostels were neglected. In 1974 the state allocated the buildings to catering and tourism enterprises for the purpose of making a profit, but many were allowed to decay until they were unsafe and had to be demolished.