The economic interests of the Soviet Union in Austria 1945 - 1955

The aim of the project was the study of the economic reconstruction of Austria after the Second World War basing on archival collections of the Soviet Union. Owing to the circomstance, that some of the archival collections in the Moscow archives concerning our project are not yet declassified, we had to limit our project to the years 1945- 1950. These years marks the organization of the soviet economic group USIA (i. e. administration of the Soviet property in Austria). The Soviet dismantling of plants and materials of austrian enterprises, on the pretence of beeing german property, began in the spring of 1945, immediately after the entry of the Red Army in Austria. After the ending of this dismantling, the Soviets started in midyear 1946 the organisation of a soviet economic group, the so-called USIA. In the USIA were united all enterprises and all country-estates and forests, which were from the soviet point of view german property, under a joint soviet administration. Towards the end of 1947 the soviet administration was established in a manner, that the enterprises were running regularly. 1948 the building up of the soviet economic group came to an end. The headquarter in Moscow, the Central Administration of the soviet property abroad, under which control the USIA was put in economic matters, was a huge economic group with the status of a ministry. This headquarter, founded 1945, gave work to approximately half a milion people in seven different countries and in the headquarter in Moscow in the year 1950. About the political intentions of the Soviet Union concerning the Austrian economy, we cannot state very much, because of the mostly pure economic character of the archival materials, which were the base of our research project. It seems to us, that the Soviet Union from 1950 on didn`t intend a longer presence in Austria. In the foreground of the soviet interests was to obtain as much profit as possible and to invest less in the economic development of the enterprises. As we can say, from the todayæs point of research, the Soviets made investments only to maintain the normal working process. The initial analysis concentrated on the soviet dismantling in Austria and the foundation of the soviet economic group, and to analyse the soviet intentions to integrate the Soviet occupation zone in Austria in the planning of the soviet economic system, also the functioning and contradictions of an economic group (USIA), organized according a planned economy in a free market economy. We were not able to deal with the benefits and costs of the occupation of Austria for the Soviet Union, because some of the archival collections concerning our work are not yet declassified. We hope that this will we in further research.