Based on a broad array of sources from Russian and Austrian archives, this collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the Soviet occupation of Austria from 1945 to 1955. The contributors cover a wide range of topics, including the Soviet Secret Services, the military kommandaturas, Soviet occupation policies, the withdrawal of troops in 1955, everyday life, the image of “the Russians,” violence against women, arrests, deportations, Soviet aid provisions, as well as children of occupation.
Based on interviews and a broad array of sources from Russian and Austrian archives, this collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the Soviet occupation of Austria from 1945 to 1955. The contributors examine a wide range of topics, including Soviet occupation policies, violence and everyday life, and the image of "the Russians."
This book compares the various aspects ? political, military economic ? of Soviet occupation in Austria, Hungary and Romania. Using documents found in Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian and Russian archives the authors argue that the nature of Soviet foreign policy has been misunderstood. Existing literature has focused on the Soviet foreign policy from a political perspective; when and why Stalin made the decision to introduce Bolshevik political systems in the Soviet sphere of influence. This book will show that the Soviet conquest of East-Central Europe had an imperial dimension as well and allowed the Soviet Union to use the territory it occupied as military and economic space. The final dimension of the book details the tragically human experiences of Soviet occupation: atrocities, rape, plundering and deportations.
This study provides a comprehensive examination of the East–West occupation of Austria from the end of World War II to the signing of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955. Examining US, Soviet, British, French, and Austrian sources, the authors trace the complex negotiation process that led to the signing of the treaty.
In Vienna on May 15, 1955, representatives of the Soviet, American, British, French, and Austrian governments signed a "State Treaty" restoring Austria's full sovereignty after seven years of Anschluss with Germany and ten years of "Allied" occupation. Vienna itself had been divided into five zones and occupied by foreign troops of four different nationalities and even more races. The Viennese were fond of relating how they had secretly listened to Allied radio broadcasts during the war: "The Soviet Union calls Austria," the announcer would intone; or "America calls Austria," or "Britain calls Austria." "We didn't call anyone," the Viennese would then explain, "but now they're all here." At the time of the State Treaty the words of the popular song weren't changed from "Wien, Wien, nur du allein" to "Wien, Wien, endlich allein"--but it may have been considered. Sven Allard, Swedish Minister (later Ambassador) to Austria from 1954 to 1964, had an unparalleled opportunity to follow the developments leading to the sudden signing of the treaty: A close friend of Bruno Kreisky, the State Secretary of the Austrian Foreign Office and later Foreign Minister, he also enjoyed the confidence of Llewellyn E. Thompson, the U.S. High Commissioner. Soviet diplomats also confided in Ambassador Allard from time to time. Now retired from the diplomatic service, the author has analyzed the political background and explained the motives for Moscow's unexpected about-face. His book is especially topical for the light it throws on the comparable problem of divided Germany.
The Everyday and Private Life of a Communist Ruling Class: Greed and Creed discusses the history of everyday life under state socialism and the ways in which post-1945 modernity reached the shores of Soviet Bloc societies. This book explains state socialism’s failure to deliver on its promise to create a new type of modern civilization, an alternative to capitalism. Placing the practices of the class of salaried functionaries of the party-state in the focus, György Péteri demonstrates the decisive role of this class in bringing Western values and patterns of everyday to the cultures and societies of Eastern Europe. The empirical work presented covers areas like consumption and consumerism, mobility (the advent of mass automobilism) and leisure (hunting and vacationing). Based on the Hungarian experience, the author finds the communist avantgarde of the state-socialist project in the act of giving up the ambition to create a new (socialist) civilization already in the late 1950s, early 1960s. From the 1960s on, state socialism was no longer a rival of capitalism (the ‘highly developed West’) in terms of creating a competitive, alternative modernity in its everyday. Rather, Eastern Europe settles among other regions of the periphery or semi-periphery of capitalist development, reacting to, imitating and, in general, following the patterns of the highly developed capitalist center of the world system with some delay.
