Austria
Landlocked country in central Europe, bounded east by Hungary, south
by Slovenia and Italy, west by Switzerland and Liechtenstein,
northwest by Germany, north by the Czech Republic, and northeast
by the Slovak Republic.
Government
Austria is a federal republic consisting of nine provinces (Länder
), each with its own provincial assembly (Landtag), provincial
governor, and councillors. The 1920 constitution was amended 1929,
suspended during Hitler's regime, and reinstated 1945. The two-chamber
federal assembly consists of a national council (Nationalrat)
and a federal council (Bundesrat). The Nationalrat has 183 members,
elected by universal suffrage through proportional representation,
for a four-year term. The Bundesrat has 64 members elected by
the provincial assemblies for varying terms. Each province provides
a chair for the Bundesrat for a six-month term. The federal president,
elected by popular vote for a six-year term, is formal head of
state and chooses the federal chancellor on the basis of support
in the Nationalrat. The federal chancellor is head of government
and chooses the cabinet.
History
Austria in the 1920s
Following the defeat of the Austro- Hungarian Empire in 1918, the last
Habsburg emperor was overthrown, and Austria became a republic,
comprising only Vienna and its immediately surrounding provinces.
The Treaty of St Germain, signed 1919 by Austria and the Allies,
established Austria's present boundaries.
The political history of the new republic was characterized
from the outset by a bitter struggle between the Social Democrats
and the Christian Socialists (who had substantial middle-class
support). The workers of Vienna, which now dominated the new state,
had played a decisive part in establishing the republic, and as
a result socialism had great influence in the National Assembly
immediately after the overthrow of the Dual Monarchy. The first
chancellor was the Socialist leader, Karl Renner, who made it
an aim of his domestic policy to establish a working agreement
between the Social Democrats and the Christian Socialists. For
a considerable time the chief issues were the Tirol question and
the Anschluss, or union, with Germany. The two issues were linked,
in that both were of concern to those with pro-German sympathies.
The Tirol question concerned the protection of the German-speaking
minorities in the South Tirol (that part of the old Austrian crownland
that has passed to Italy after 1918), and was of considerable
importance even outside the two countries immediately affected.
The practical acquiescence of successive Austrian governments
in the Tirol situation as it had been decided in the peace treaty
drove many moderate but patriotic Austrians into the extreme pan-
German camp. Austria's unstable economic position, producing as
it did chronic poverty and unemployment, led to the growth of
extreme leftist groups in Vienna itself, and this led to equal
extremism among the non-socialists. It also led many Austrians
to decide that Austria would never have stable government until
it achieved greater economic stability, and this was increasingly
considered to mean union, at least economic union, with Germany.
Internal tensions increase
In 1927 there was serious Social Democrat rioting in Vienna. One result
of this was the formation of the Heimwehr, or bourgeois private
army, which was designed as a challenge to the activities of the
socialists' illegal armed bands, which, in times of stress, patrolled
Vienna. In the elections of 1930 the Social Democrats replaced
the Christian Socialists as the largest single party, but they
too had to rely on the support of the pan-German group. In 1931,
in the face of Austria's worsening economic position, caused by
the world depression, a customs union with Germany was concluded
in the face of much international opposition. Two months later
the biggest bank in Austria failed; the government fell, and the
Christian Socialists returned to power. The customs union was
immediately renounced.
Internal tension was growing. In 1932 Engelbert Dollfuss, a
Christian Socialist, became chancellor. He allied with the Heimwehr
group to maintain his position, and adopted a line independent
of both the pan- Germans (by now Nazi in character) and the socialists.
To do this he had to resort to dictatorial methods. In February
1934 the socialists rose in revolt against the Heimwehr, and for
several days there was civil war in Vienna and in some of the
larger provincial towns. The rising was crushed with heavy loss
of life to the socialists, and their leaders were executed. Dollfuss,
who had suppressed the rising, forfeited much of the support he
had previously gained abroad for his resistance to the German
Nazis, besides driving some socialists into a conspiracy with
the Austrian Nazis to overthrow his government.
Stringent laws against political violence were now introduced,
and a new constitution introduced suspending democracy and making
Austria a corporative state. Some of the Nazi conspirators were
imprisoned, with the result that in July there was a sudden (unsuccessful)
Nazi revolt, in which Dollfuss was assassinated. He was succeeded
as chancellor by Kurt von Schuschnigg.
Annexation by Germany and World War II
After 1934 Austrian independence was gravely threatened by the annexationist
ambitions of Adolf Hitler (himself Austrian-born), and the pressure
on Austria further increased following Italy's alliance with Germany
in 1936. In February 1938 Schuschnigg was forced to accept a Nazi
minister of the interior, and finally, in March 1938, the Germans
occupied the country. The Austrian president was forced to resign,
and Schuschnigg was imprisoned. The army was incorporated with
that of Germany, which also took over diplomatic representation
abroad. The Austrian Diet was dissolved, the German mark substituted
for the Austrian schilling, and the country subordinated to the
Reich as the German province of ` Ostmark´ (East Mark), under
Hitler's dictatorship. The German annexation met with no armed
resistance, and the Anschluss (union) became an accomplished fact.
In World War II Austria's armed forces, subsumed under German
control, were used on the Eastern Front throughout the campaign
against the USSR (for more details of the Eastern Front see World
War II). Though many Austrians had originally welcomed the Anschluss,
serious opposition to it, though largely unorganized, had existed
from the start. Certainly by 1943, once the war had begun to turn
against Germany, the attitude of the Austrian people generally
was anti-Nazi; this was manifested in acts of sabotage in agriculture,
and by opposition from industrial workers, who suffered heavy
losses at the hands of Nazi execution squads. But Austria was
useful to Germany as an air-raid shelter, and affluent Germans
evacuated their families to Austria, even before the mass evacuation
to the Alpine districts. Hence Austria suffered from a shortage
of houses and food, and in 1943 the population was 10 million
compared with 7 million before the war.
At the Moscow Conference in October 1943 Britain, the USA, and
the USSR pledged to restore Austrian independence. By April 1945
Russian armies had crossed the Austrian frontier, and on 13 April
Vienna was captured.
The restoration of Austrian independence
On 27 April 1945 a provisional Austrian government was set up in Vienna,
and in October this was recognized by the Allies as the rightful
Austrian government. Its constitutional structure was based on
the constitution of 1920. Elections held in November 1945 resulted
in a coalition of the Socialist Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the
Austrian People's Party (ÖVP, the Catholic party). Subsequently
Leopold Figl of the People's Party became chancellor, while Karl
Renner, the veteran Socialist, became president.
After the cessation of hostilities Austria was divided into
British, US, French, and Soviet zones of occupation. Vienna, within
the 1937 boundaries of the city, was jointly occupied by armed
forces of the four Allied powers, and its administration directed
by an inter-Allied governing authority of commandants appointed
by the respective commanders in chief. At a meeting in September
1945 the Allied council of foreign ministers decided that the
frontier of Austria would not be changed save for minor rectifications,
and this decision therefore barred the restoration to Austria
of the South Tirol, of which it had been deprived in 1919. At
various times since 1945, incidents in the German-speaking areas
of the Italian Tirol have led to renewed popular support in Austria
for a revision of the Tirol frontiers in Austria's favour.
The postwar Austrian government concentrated on reconstruction.
Vienna had suffered severe damage, and major rehousing programmes
were begun. But the division of Austria and Vienna into separate
zones hindered economic recovery. In 1955 a peace treaty was signed
by Britain, France, the USA, and the USSR recognizing Austria's
sovereignty. The occupation forces were withdrawn, and Austria's
future neutrality was stipulated, which continued throughout the
Cold War. Reparations were to be paid by Austria to the USSR over
a ten-year period.
Austria suffered few crises in the postwar years. Prosperity
returned, helped by good labour relations and tourism, and in
1960 Austria became a founding member of the European Free Trade
Association (EFTA). From 1953 Austria was governed by a coalition
of the ÖVP and the SPÖ. Until 1961 the chancellor was Julius Raab.
In 1966 the ÖVP formed the government alone (the first non- coalition
government since the war) with Josef Klaus as chancellor.
The Kreisky years
The SPÖ formed a minority government under Bruno Kreisky in 1970 and
increased its majority in the 1971 and 1975 general elections.
The government was nearly defeated in 1978 over proposals to install
the first nuclear power plant. The plan was abandoned, but nuclear
energy remained a controversial issue. The SPÖ lost its majority
in 1983, and Kreisky resigned, refusing to join a coalition. The
SPÖ decline was partly attributed to the emergence of two environmentalist
groups, the United Green Party (VGÖ) and the Austrian Alternative
List (ALÖ). Fred Sinowatz, the new SPÖ chair, formed a coalition
government with the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).
The Waldheim controversy
When Kurt Waldheim, former UN secretary general, became president in
1986, he was diplomatically isolated by many countries because
of controversy over his service in the German army during World
War II. Later that year Sinowatz resigned as chancellor and was
succeeded by Franz Vranitzky. The SPÖ-FPÖ coalition broke up when
an extreme right-winger, Jörg Haider, became FPÖ leader. Vranitzky
remained as chancellor with the ÖVP leader, Alois Mock, as vice
chancellor. Sinowatz denounced the new coalition as a betrayal
of socialist principles and resigned as chair of the SPÖ.
Entering the European Union
In the 1990 general election the Socialists won a clear lead over other
parties and Vranitzky began another term as chancellor. Thomas
Klestil, the candidate of the ÖVP, replaced Waldheim as president
in 1992. A referendum held in June 1994 gave a clear endorsement
of Austria's application for European Union (EU) membership. Despite
gains for far- right parties, including the FPÖ, in the October
1994 general election, the SPÖ-ÖVP coalition continued under Vranitzky's
leadership, and in January 1995 Austria left EFTA to become a
full EU member. In the same month the FPÖ was renamed Freedom.
The governing coalition collapsed in October 1995 following
disagreements over the budget and popular disillusion with EU
membership, and the strict convergence criteria for monetary union.
In the ensuing general election in December 1995 the SPÖ emerged
as the winner, but in February 1996, after seven weeks of negotiations,
the SPÖ and the ÖVP agreed on renewing the coalition led by Vranitzky.
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