The forint was reintroduced on 1 August 1946, after the pengő was rendered almost worthless by massive hyperinflation in 1945–46: the highest ever recorded. This was brought about by a mixture of the high demand for reparations from the USSR, Soviet plundering of Hungarian industries, and the holding of Hungary's gold reserves in the United States. The different parties in the government had different plans to solve this problem. To the Independent Smallholders' Party—which had won a large majority in the 1945 Hungarian parliamentary election—as well as the Social Democrats, outside support was essential. However, the Soviet Union and its local supporters in the Hungarian Communist Party were opposed to raising loans in the West, and thus the Communist Party masterminded the procedure using exclusively domestic resources. The Communist plan called for tight limits on personal spending as well as the concentration of existing stocks in state hands.