Austrian State Treaty at 70: an Eastern European Perspective
The Austrian State Treaty was signed 70 years ago today, re-establishing, after years of occupation, the sovereign Austrian state. The agreement, signed by the representatives of the Allied occupation forces (France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States) and the Austrian government, on May 15, 1955, was among the most important steps in the process of establishing a postwar European order. As the full title of the treaty foresaw, its primary aim was to re-establish “an independent and democratic Austria.” It brought political stability and economic prosperity for the Austrian people, while, in Soviet-bloc countries, it awoke and nurtured hopes as well as concerns in the wider public and among politicians—most importantly in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
The signing of the Austrian State Treaty is inseparable from the formation of the Warsaw Pact. From an inside perspective of the political public in the countries under Soviet rule in Eastern and Central Europe, the signing of the Austrian State Treaty was part of a longer trend of destalinization, after Stalin`s death in 1953.
Their hopes were also closely connected to the Soviet “smile-offensive” toward the Third World and the Soviet compliments for the achievements of the Bandung Conference held in April 18–24, 1955, which set forth the principles of the future Non-Aligned Movement. The changing atmosphere in international affairs made the impression that, after the tight grip of the Stalin-era, Soviet bloc countries might gain greater autonomy in their domestic affairs, and the relationship between the Soviet Union and its satellites could be reshaped. This impression was further corroborated by Khruschev`s reconciliatory utterances, targeting, primarily, the Yugoslav leader, J. B. Tito: from now on, the Soviet leadership would show respect to the “local idiosyncrasies of Socialist development,” and the obedient copying of the Soviet model ceased to be a stern expectation. Imre Nagy, the leader of the anti-Stalinist reformers in Hungary, and future Premier of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, examined these new promises and perspectives extensively in his political essays written in 1955, while he was practically under house arrest as a political pariah excommunicated from the party. (The manuscripts of these essays were smuggled out of the country after the crackdown of the Hungarian Revolution, and were first published in the West, in 1957.)
The signing of the Austrian Peace Treaty animated excitement particularly in Hungary for yet another reason. RFE/RL conducted interviews with individuals crossing the Austrian–Hungarian border, and summarized the information thus acquired —rumors and personal accounts as well as official news—in so-called Information Items. Accompanied by commentary from RFE/RL analysts, these Items capture the Hungarian belief that the Austrian State Treaty might terminate Soviet military presence on Hungarian soil, since, according to the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, the Soviet army could stay in Hungary in order to secure the routes and contact lines between the homeland and the divisions stationed in Austria.
These hopes and expectations were diminished, however, when the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance, or the Warsaw Pact, was signed on May 14, 1955, a day before the Austrian State Treaty. The Warsaw Pact maintained the legal ground of Soviet military occupation in the satellite countries. It is no coincidence that the Hungarian official state radio devoted a much longer program to the Warsaw summit and the signature of the Warsaw Pact, than to the news of the Austrian State Treaty the next day; this is apparent in RFE/RL's transcript of the May 15, 1955 broadcast. And the siren sounds of greater autonomy, parity, and mutual respect were soon cast away by the roar of the Soviet tanks invading Budapest in 1956.
Although Austria was not a target country of the operations of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, its research units tried to keep track of the public and political reactions to the signature of the treaty in Eastern- and Central Europe.
The Austrian State Treaty not only offered new opportunities in economic cooperation, it brought the so called “free world” significantly closer to the Soviet camp. The number of illegal emigrants from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, who attempted to escape through the “green border,” significantly increased, prompting security forces of these countries to take additional efforts to block the growing outflow of refugees, and reinforce the infrastructure of the Iron Curtain. A report preserved at the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security Services reveals that the number of illegal crosses at the Austrian–Hungarian border zone had almost doubled from 1954 to 1955.
RFE/RL's Information Items based on interviews with refugees offer unique insight into these considerations, sentiments, and concerns.
