Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 42. (1992)

BISCHOF, Günter: The Anglo-American Powers and Austrian Neutrality, 1953–1955

detail than the recent literature the ambiguities in the American position resulting from disagreements among the top policy makers. I will also pay more attention to British views. Furthermore I will try to outline the reasons both for the basic Anglo-American mistrust of Austrian neutrality, and their decision not to oppose it openly or interfere directly in Austro-Soviet bilateral negotiations.

The First half of 1953 brought a number of new governments onto the stage of international politics. In January, Eisenhower and Dulles replaced the Truman/Acheson team which had been caught up in the morass of the Cold War in places like Korea and Vietnam. In March, Stalin’s unexpected death held out the promise of change in the Kremlin17). In Austria, Julius Raab replaced Leopold Figl as Chancellor of the durable Conservative/Socialist coalition government. Bruno Kreisky, the young State Secretary in the Foreign Office, brought fresh insights to Gruber’s foreign policy18). Between 1950 and 1953, when progress on the Austrian Treaty was made impossible by East-West tensions over Korea and the exploding nuclear arms race, Gruber practised what could be called a „diplomacy of pestering“: when no progress seemed possible in any field of East-West negotiations, the Austrian question, if nothing else, had to be kept on top of the international agenda (the 1952 UN initiative)19). The new Raab government seized the initiative and warmly welcomed recent Soviet alleviations of the Austrian occupation. While Austrian politicians had criticized Soviet policy openly before 1953, Raab signalled his departure from the exceedingly pro-Western policies of longtime Foreign Minister Karl Gruber. Raab, the „petty bourgeois“ from St. Pölten in the Soviet zone, praised the Soviets for their policies, ending censorship and giving back some „German assets.“ Raab’s new spirit of trust is best expressed in his famous saying that „one should not twist the tail of the Russian bear that stands in the Austrian garden“20).

The Anglo-American Powers and Austrian Neutrality 1953-1955

blished Proceedings deposited at the Seeley G. Mudd Library at Princeton University).

17) Stephen E. Ambrose Eisenhower: The President (New York 1984) 44-103; Martin Gilbert Winston S. Churchill vol. VIII: ’Never Despair’1945-1965 (Boston 1988) 805-28.

18) Rauchensteiner Die Zwei 183-200; Stourzh Staatsvertrag 81-90; see also the various essays in Julius Raab: Eine Biographie in Einzeldarstellungen, ed. by Alois Bru- satti and Gottfried Heindl (Vienna 1986).

19) For „diplomacy of pestering,“ see Bischof Austria and Moscow’s Wiles-, on the 1950-1953 period, for which much of research still needs to be done, see Stourzh Staatsvertrag 71-81; Rauchensteiner Sonderfall 299-314; Kurth Cronin Great Power Politics 112-19; Rathkolb Von der Besatzung zur Neutralität in Bischof/Leidenfrost 377-90.

20) Rauchensteiner Die Zwei 201-3; Stourzh Staatsvertrag 81-3; Ludwig Steiner Die Außenpolitik Julius Raabs als Bundeskanzler in Raab, ed. by Brusatti/Heindl 212- 14.

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