Introduction

Lying at the junction between East and West, Austria played a special role in establishing contacts and mediating between the two blocs in the years from 1945 to 1989. In this context, the ‘Iron Curtain’ is seen not only in the narrower sense of the technical closed border, erected by the Soviet Union and its satellite states, but as a parcel of demarcatory measures taken equally by the Western side (withholding support and loans for Eastern Europe 1945–7, exclusion from the Marshall Plan 1948–52, the COCOM embargo) and by the Eastern side (active strategy of delinking under socialist auspices).

The precise demands on and possibilities of the Austrian intermediary role were brought about by the political and economic backdrop. From an Austrian perspective, the State Treaty (1955) and the country's ensuing neutrality set a crucial political course for forming relations with the Eastern bloc. From the perspective of the eastern neighbouring states, breaks and ruptures stood to the fore, dominated by the respective domestic events such as the communist seizure of power (1945–8); the reforms and uprisings, respectively, after Stalin's death (1953); the Prague Spring and its suppression (1968); and martial law in Poland (1981). Furthermore, bilateral relations were overshadowed by the relations between the world powers which developed from the co-operative phase immediately after the Second World War (1945–6/7), via Cold War (1947/8–62), détente (1962–80) and the Second Cold War (1980–90), until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the break-up of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and the War-saw Pact in 1991 put an end to the bipolar phase.