The implications of government accumulated a number of liabilities. They included:
• A "program of structural reforms" in nationalized industry, which cost thousands of workers their jobs.
Waldheim's election
• Cutbacks in social benefits. • Stepped-up armament and militarization. Until a few years ago, the army was more than unloved by the bulk of the population. It was precisely the SP government that raised the social prestige of the armed
FOR THE first time in 20 years, the partisans of the bourgeois right in
Austria got an opportunity to celebrate an electoral triumph. It was the victory on June 8, 1986, of their candidate for president, Kurt
Waldheim, former secretary-general of the United Nations. Even in the first round of the elections, Waldheim got 49.7% of the votes cast. He lacked only 0.3% to get an absolute majority and be elected there and then.
The Socialist Party candidate, Kurt Steyrer, was left far behind with
43.6%. The Green Alternative candidate, Freda Meissner-Blau, got only 5.5%. The far-right candidate, Otto Serinzi, got 1.2%.
In the decisive electoral contest on June 8, Waldheim won out over his Socialist Party rival Sterer by 53.9% to 46.1%.
Nevertheless, Waldheim - the candidate of the country's biggest party, the Austrian People's Party (the OVP) - had been the target of many accusations about his political past. Charges by the World
Jewish Congress, the US government, and investigations by a series of
Western governments had pointed up Waldheim's compromises with
Nazism. Every day, journalists in the world's biggest publications and radio and TV stations reported new documents that highlighted the charges against the OVP candidate.
Despite all this, the OVP not only did not withdraw Waldheim from the electoral race, but he got 53.9% of the votes of those
Austrians who cast ballots. This is an event that has to seem paradoxical and incomprehensible to a lot of foreign observers.
What happened cannot be understood without looking at Austrian politics in recent years, in particular at the record of the Austrian
Socialist Party (SPO), which was in the government for 16 years, and most fundamentally at the evolution of Austria since the collapse of Hitler's Nazi regime.
ROBERT MISIK
We have been used for a long time to things happening differently in
Austria than in the rest of Europe.
This was also true in relation to the blow represented by the conservative
"turn." (1) The bourgeoisie's austerity offensive in a large part of West
Europe has often been linked directly to the replacement of a social democratic government by a purely bourgeois cabinet.
In Austria, it was a coalition government led by the social democrats, together with the right-wing freeenterprisers of the Austrian Liberal
Party (FPO) that began cutting jobs in state enterprises, introduced an accelerated arms build-up and made
10 cutbacks in pensions and benefits. did not have an entirely free hand, the OVP was unable previously to make the slightest headway in capitalizing on the worsening economic situation and was accumulating political scandals at every turn. It confined itself to a purely populist critique of individual aspects of the social demoprogram. Before now, its repertoire did not include a well-thoughtout bourgeois program like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, or Helmut Kohl. It was the SPO itself that took the initiative in applying bourgeois solutions to the crisis.
Thus, the liberal-social democrat forces. Now more and more unemployed youth are turning up in the army as career soldiers.
• Last but not least, the social democrat-liberal government passed a futher milestone in the militarization of Austria by its purchase of new fighter aircraft.
On the public stage, those who implemented this right-wing course in the SPO were first of all very awkward and secondly extremely technocratic. Unlike the policy of Bruno Kreisty in the 1960s, who attracted a large part of the popula-. tion of the backward Austria of those days behind him with the slogan of "Make Austria ready for Europe," the SPO's policy of administering the crisis rapidly cost it its ability to win a majority.
This breakdown in the political dominance of the SPO coincided in particular with the emergence of a severe crisis in the giant nationalized steel combine VOEST. This led to the economic policy of the social democrats being widely discredited in the eyes of the population. Moreover, the SPO's defensive attitude to the right's propaganda for reprivatization and plant closures deeply undermined the confidence of the core of social democratic voters in this sector.
Against this background, the OVP saw the time as ripe for steering a more radical bourgeois course. And in this context, the conflict over Kurt Waldheim's past came just at the right time.
In the debate about Waldheim's activity in the Nazi regime and in the Nazi army in the Balkans, longdormant ideologies surfaced. The tenor of Waldheim's election speeches was that it was the soldiers of the Wehrmacht who did their "duty," not the thousands of resistance fighters who risked their lives and often lost them.
The revelations made by the New York Times, the World Jewish Congress, and the Austrian weekly Profil
1. The "turn" is the motto of the Kohl government in West Germany. It means a return to strict capitalist management, and is the term used in the Germanspeaking world for the capitalist offensive a la Reagan and Thatcher. - 1V.
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AUSTRIA
were dismissed by : Waldheim as nothing more than "a campaign by certain Jewish circles in New York." As for the attacks against him in the international press, Waldheim said in an interview with Le Monde that it is known to be dominated by the World Jewish Congress."
The general secretary of the OVP, Michael Graff, went further. He talked about #shameless characters from the World Jewish Congress" who wanted to "do in" Kurt Waldheim, in their "insolent," *stupid," "primitive," "shameless." "vulgar," and "slanderous" way, with their "Mafia methods."
In wide circles of the population, the OVP opened up an escape valve. The shamefaced anti-Semitism that
HAP
lost its respectability after the Holocaust, became a shameless antiSemitism. "Only when the Jews are gone will there be peace again." "It is a scandal how insolent the Jews have become." Such phrases became current again in the street discussions prompted by the election campaign. Threatening letters
This went hand in hand with hundreds of threatening letters to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (the organization of the Austrian Jewish community), spitting at orthodox Jews, and broken windows in Jewish shops.
For electoralist reasons, the SPO leadership responded in a wholly inadequate way to this OVP witchhunt campaign. Instead of taking on the OVP's anti-Semitic campaign and rightist tone head on, the social democrats focused on presenting a positive picture of its candidate. The SPO firmly refused to take a position on pated in war crimes.
Moreover, Waldheim was assigned to the West Bosnia military group command. In June-August 1942 this unit waged a repressive campaign of unprecedented brutality against the Yugoslav resistance struggle, in which more than 68,000 people were murdered or put into concentration camps.
A half year later, Waldheim was Dubrovnik-Plevilja area, new against the partisans were
Thus, in 1942-43, Lieutenant and later First Lieutenant Waldheim was all over the area where the Nazi regime waging its dirty against the Yugoslav freedom fighters. After that, Waldheim was transferred as first officer to the command staff of the Eleventh Italian Army to Athens, where the "struggle against communism," as it was then called, had just begun, and mass deportations especially in Salonika (where Waldheim was soon transferred)
Most of these facts were brought to light by the World Jewish Congress and then investigated and confirmed by the New York Times. Moreover, they flew in the face of his previous claims (made especially when he was a candidate for UN secretary-general) that he had been mustered out of the Wehrmacht in 1941 after being
In Austria there was only a very distorted discussion of these facts. Not a single big daily reported critically on Waldheim. Although the World Jewish Congress never accused Waldheim of being a war criminal, but just produced documents (including UN ones) in which Waldheim was listed, at the request of the Yugoslav government, as a wanted war criminal; although all the big press in West Europe and the USA attacked Waldheim; although the governrents of Israel, Great Britain, and the US and French legislatures carried out investigations, the whole discussion of Waldheim was portrayed by the OVP and the biggest Austrian papers in an anti-Semitic light, as "a vulgar campaign by this private organization, the World Jewish Congress.
The resistance in Austria was conducted in general by two currents:
1. A group consist. g mainly of intellectuals around he Neues Osterreich group, which published documents about Waldheim's role during the war, under the title "Doing Your Duty," as well as an ad in the weekly Profil in which over a thousand prominent Austrians called on Waldheim to withdraw his candidacy. It took the first steps in initiating the resistance in the country.
2. The Revolutionary Marxist Group (GRM), the Arcirian section of the Fourth International, while collaborating very closely with the Neues Osterreich group, focussed on organizing against Waldheim's rallies. Together with the German antifascist Beate Klarsfeld, who lives in Paris, it managed partially to break through the blockade in the Austrian press and demonstrate that there was another Austria beyond the swamp of anti-Semitism and soggy civic courage.
The resistance could not, of course, do much to change the election result. Waldheim scored a landslide victory with 53.9% of the vote. Several factors were responsible for that, some of which have already been mentioned.
1. Waldheim's victory was not so much a victory for him as it was a defeat for the SPO. The Austrian people have lost their confidence in the SPO, in which a large majority believed for 16 years.
Kurt Waldheim on the election trail in May, 1986 (DR) the discussion on Waldheim's past.
The discussion was given impetus by the discovery of Waldheim's membership in the Storm Troopers' Order of the Colors (Reiterstandarte), the Nazi Student Union, and the Nazi Order of Chivalry (Reiterkorps).
The World Jewish Congress investigated Waldheim's past in connection with the Nazi Wehrmacht's operations in the Balkans. The former UN secretary-general served with an army group that was assigned specially to repressing the partisans in the Sarajevo and Dubrovnik area.
At the time, Waldheim was liaison officer between the German. and Italian units. It was clearly proven that he was then one of those in the Wehrmacht best informed about the activities of the troops in this region. So far no one has been able to prove that he himself personally partici-
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The SPO managed to mobilize only 88% of the voters that voted for it in the 1983 parliamentary elections behind Steyrer. voters cast their ballots for Waldheim.
3% did not vote. On the other hand, the OVP pulled 92.8% of voters behind Waldheim. A bare 0.8% went over to Steyrer. Still, 6.4% of the OVP voters did not go to the polls to vote for Waldheim but abstained. That indicates that among the supporters of the bourgeois party there is also a small but deterwho did not go along with the OVP's electoral strategy.
Overall, it was mainly the crumbling of the core SPO vote, especially in the industrial areas, that decided
2. There is a stronger anti-Semitic political tradition in Austria than in other West European countries (in this regard Poland could probably be compared to Austria). According to sociological analyses, 12% of the population are susceptible to rabid anti-Semitism and 60% are by subliminal anti-Semitism.
The anti-Semitic tones in Waldspot studies, had no influence on the electoral behaviour latter group. But the group of 12% rabid anti-Semites, who were previously spread across the party-political spectrum, was fully mobilized by the antiSemitic appeals in the election campaign and lined up, virtually to a person, behind Waldheim.
decisive thing, is suposed to have represented a swing of about 4%) as the long-term political effect. Forty years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism become respectable. In this respect, change for the future political climate.
The final crucial point is an historical one, the way that Austria has formulated its role in the Third Reich and in the Second World War. When Hitler marched into Austria in March 1938, hundreds of thousands of Austrians greeted him in the center of Vienna waving swastika flags. There was scarcely any resistance to the Anschluss.
The percentage of Austrians enrolled in the National Socialist organizations was higher than it was in Germany itself. In relation to the population, a much higher percentage of Austrians were Nazi war criminals. In this respect, Austrians were neither "more nor less" Nazis than all the other German people.
However, at the Moscow conferences of the allies in Moscow in 1943, Austria was, so to speak, 12 exonerated from the crimes of the Nazi regime by being termed Hitler's "first victim"
That was the origin of the lie on which the life of the Austrian nation was based." After 1945, all political parties eagerly grasped it. It relieved the burden of guilt on those who had an active part in the Nazi regime or who had collaborated with it way raising a disResponse of the left
In this sense, Waldheim really was a "typical Austrian" as such by most Austrians. The attacks on Waldheim today, 40 years afterward, were seen by most Austrians as an assault on Austria and those who were "involved" at the time.
The response of the political left to the reactionary rampage in Waldheim's campaign was modest, not to say pathetic.
The left in the social democracy was not visible. It injected no note of its own into the election campaign. Thus, like the party tops, it limited itself to presenting a posi tive picture of its candidate."
On the other hand, the position of the Green-Alternative on the sensitivity to political developments mobilization behind Waldheim, Greens maintained their schema that "the social democrats are as bad as the OVP." Freda Meissner-Blau, the Green Alternative candidate, who got 5.5% in the first round, could not get agreement on any positive vote in the second round. The Parliamentary Citizen's Initiative (BIP), a list of notables that has undertaken to unite the splintered Green-Alternative movement, called openly for a blank vote. Its representative, Werner Vogt, even described Waldheim as the
This dreadful political level of the Green-Alternative leaders was exceeded only by the reaction of their voters. About 37% of the MeissnerBlau voters cast their ballots for Waldheim in the second round. Some 36.4% stayed away from the polls. And only 26.6% voted for Steyrer. Only in Vienna was the picture different. There, 50% voted for Steyrer, as opposed to 25% for Waldheim.
3. The behaviour of the communists was also poor. On the basis of the correct analysis that the SPO today is in the forefront in pushing social cutbacks and militarization, and ultimately responsible for the defeat, the Austrian CP (KPO) shut its eyes to the political dividing line that Waldheim's election meant for Austria. It left its members free either to vote blank or vote for Steyrer.
4. Thus, it was only the GRM and a small group of intellectuals and independents who waged a sharp attack on Waldheim in Austria.
The snakily smooth diplomat Waldheim has become the symbol of the conservative "turn." The weak-kneed OVP, which before now has not propagated any thoroughgoing capitalist austerity program, managed to shift over to a political polarization course in the election campaign. And the SPO was never willing nor able to confront it. The SPO leadership, which for a half year has been pushing a moderate austerity program in government, has maneuvered itself into a situation where it is now retreating step by step in the face of increased pressure from the right.
Of particular significance in this respect is the reaction of the SPO leadership to the defeat. A day after the election, the man who had served up till then as chancellor and party leader, Fred Sinowatz, a representative of the party center with a slight inclination to the right, resigned his post as head of government. He was succeeded by a representative of the party right, Franz Vranitzky, a former banker and finance minister in the outgoing cabinet.
With the exception of the post of finance minister, which went to former nationalization minister Ferdinand Lacina, who can be identified rather with the party left, all the key positions are now filled by representatives of the right wing. In particular this included the "best paid manager in Austria," Rudolf Streicher, who gained notoriety as the director of the Ranshofen-Berndorf and Steyer atonalized enterprises, where he took e responsibility for ma layoffs.
Austria is now in the midst of a political upheaval, marked by the worst state and government crisis since 1966, since the fall of the
Coalition." The political "Great weather vane is pointing toward a "turn to the right." And against this course of the OVP, what the SPO is offering is ineffective. It is obviously trying to show that it can carry through a better austerity program than the bourgeoisie itself.
At the same time, the upheaval in the political scene, and in particular in the SPO itself, offered the independent left an opening for mobilizing against the "turn." Looking ahead, the period after the parli amentary elections in April 1987 will be decisive.
WEST GERMANY and oppression, and therefore accept the worst living conditions because at a "better"
least they represent