How Communism Died in Austria
KATSCHER, FRIEDRICH
How Communism Died By Friedrich Katscher The party which received only 5 per cent of the vote under Soviet occupation has faded rapidly since 1955 in Austria Vienna "Information: Dr. Otto...
...In fact, Austrian Communism has never been very strong...
...Not only have these 'symptoms' not been opposed, but the struggle against them was suppressed by hook or by crook...
...They had supported Communist periodicals by means of large ads for the Russian-operated factories, and they had paid the Communist publishing plant for the printing of the Austrian Soviet newspaper Oesterreichische Zeitung...
...He has gone over to the side of the class-enemy and supports agitation against the CPA and against our fraternal parties...
...In 1949, they got 213,000 votes (5.1 per cent) and 5 seats...
...These two paragraphs were published recently in Volksstimme, central organ of the Communist party of Austria, Hungary's small neutral neighbor...
...The termination of the four-power occupation meant the return of certain factories operated by the Soviets to the Austrian Government...
...As long as the Russians controlled both these factories and the borders with Czechoslovakia and Hungary, it was easy to import, export and sell goods without paying duty or taxes to the Austrian Government...
...Griimm was invited to visit Russia and China and wrote a book on his impressions...
...When the Soviet means of "guiding the masses" in Hungary proved to be tanks, artillery and bombs, he cut off all relations with the party...
...And even today it is not being conducted with full determination...
...But the three days passed, then a week went by, then a month, finally several months...
...Many Communist mayors and officials managed to keep their jobs, however, through Soviet intervention...
...Both men, it appears, were to some extent misguided idealists...
...The Russians had provided confiscated buildings, furniture, paper and apartments for the use of the party and its functionaries...
...Griimm, the other prominent defector, expressed the mood of all the misguided idealists when he entitled his "thoughts of a former Communist" in a Catholic weekly "The Great Illusion...
...The Austrians have learned well from ten years of occupation and from the striking object-lesson in neighboring Hungary...
...last year, only 192,000 votes (4.4 per cent) and 3 seats...
...This illegal state of affairs is now over, and satellite trading partners now often prefer to deal with Austrian firms directly, rather than go through the Communist trade trust...
...The Soviet Army's behavior ended that chance...
...As a result, the local Communist party will never be more than a small club of dogmatic die-hards...
...One of them, Dr...
...The end of Soviet rule in eastern Austria also deprived the local Communists of certain financial means...
...Though Volksstimme has recently been publishing a series on "Austria's path to Communism," there will be no such path here...
...These were strong words by the secretary of a society for friendship with the USSR...
...In connection with the Hungarian events, some comrades have left the party, among them people ivhose loss grieves us bitterly and who ive are convinced will return...
...At the same time, opportunists who now lost the high jobs they had obtained in these factories through the CP also defected...
...The Austrian CP lost many less prominent supporters as a result of Hungary, though the exact number cannot be determined...
...Otto Langbein, a member of the Communist party of Austria until a short time ago, has become an enemy of the Communist movement...
...Otto Langbein, who held several offices in the Austro-Soviet Society in recent years and has now left it, is anxious to spread all the lies of our worst opponents and slanderers about the party, the world Communist movement and the Soviet Union...
...The Communists remained a 5-per-cent party...
...Neither Langbein nor Griimm were high party functionaries...
...It is a fact," he wrote, "that for two or three decades the Communist party of the Soviet Union has consistently guided the masses by administration 'and direction rather than persuasion, that bureaucratic petrification and gross violation of inner-party democracy and socialist legality have not been exceptions but the system...
...Abduction, rape, plunder and manslaughter went on...
...former friends of the Soviet Union were silent...
...The nation's workers and progressive intellectuals have always rallied to the seasoned Social Democratic party (Socialist party since 1945), for many decades one of the world's leading democratic labor parties...
...This struggle] began only a little while ago...
...Many people were quite willing to understand this, referring to the grief Hitler had inflicted on Russia...
...In May 1933 the CP was outlawed by the Dollfuss regime, and remained illegal until the collapse of Nazism...
...But this did not help...
...Langbein wrote an article for a Communist cultural review, Tagcbuch, in which he welcomed the "courageous behavior of the leading Soviet politicians at the 20th Party "Congress and in the succeeding discussions and revelations...
...At the same time, the Communist printshop began running a deficit when the Oesterreichische Zeitung folded...
...There were rumors in Vienna that the Soviet soldiers were being given three days of liberty to plunder after their entry...
...But] some former party members have also become enemies of the party...
...Many employes of these factories, who had joined the CP to hold their jobs, now quit the party...
...In this article...
...But the first Parliamentary election in November 1945 brought the Communists only 5.4 per cent of the vote and only 4 of 165 seats in Parliament...
...The party has never published membership figures and tries to avoid electoral tests...
...there was no change in the brutality of the Soviet troops or their commanders...
...Hans Griimm, who during his membership knew only the help and broad-mindedness of the party, is writing for a People's party newspaper...
...It has not nominated a candidate for the Presidential election in May, for example, for it fears the result may show its weakness...
...At the beginning of 1945, Austrians were fed up with Nazism and war, and were ready to hail the Soviet Army as a liberator...
...In the following elections, the Communists changed their name, first to Left Bloc in 1949, then to People's Opposition in 1953...
...Last June...
...In the last elections held under the first Austrian Republic, in November 1930, the Communists got only 21,000 votes— about half of one per cent—and no seats in Parliament...
...The unprofitable Vienna afternoon daily Abend was closed down (as were most provincial dailies), and the party's paid staff was sharply reduced...
...Another, Dr...
...The local Communists thus had the best chance in their history to recruit militant anti-Nazis and to expand...
...Communism is losing ground throughout Europe, even in its fatherland, and Austria is no exception...
...Langbein spoke of the "passionate efforts to help overcome detrimental mistakes" and urged "Marxist discussion" instead of dogmatism...
...in 1953, they got 228,000 votes (5.3 per cent) and 4 seats...
...The Communists received almost a one-third share, along with the People's party and the Socialists, in the provisional post-Hitler regime...
...But the primary financial base of the CP was a trade trust which had a monopoly of trade with the Soviet bloc and the support of the Russian-operated factories...
...Thus financial catastrophe was averted, but the party's room for maneuver was considerably curtailed...
...Significant losses set in after the signing of the Austrian State Treaty in May 1955...
...they were, however, two of the best-known Communist intellectuals...
...The Communists had to enforce rigid economies...
Vol. 40 • March 1957 • No. 12
