Soviet-Austrian trade and economic relations: the transition from compensatory deliveries to commercial trade (1955 - 1964)

The purpose of the article is to show the transition from compensatory supplies from Austria to the Soviet Union to commercial trade after the Second World War. Despite the fact that geopolitical factors continued to prevail in many foreign policy guidelines of the Soviet leadership, a pragmatic understanding of the fundamental significance of the economy as the basis of all policies dictated the need to intensify trade and economic ties with the then dynamically developing leading economic region of the world. The article examines the “Austrian phenomenon”, when the Austrian Republic, which gained state independence in 1955 in exchange for acquiring a neutral status, managed to successfully develop its position in an extremely difficult geopolitical balance of power, determined by two dominant socialist and capitalist blocs. In this case, the Soviet Union managed to maximally mobilize the political and social forces that sympathized with it. Particular attention is paid to the final period of N. S. Khrushchev’s reign (1960-1964), when more pro-Western politicians of the Austrian People’s Party came to power in Austria, seeking close integration with the Common Market of the European Economic Community while balancing between the Eastern and Western blocs. Communicative practices are analyzed at the personal level within the framework of the “eastern direction” of Austrian foreign policy based on documents from Russian and Austrian archives. The author comes to the conclusion that the institutional and structural limitations of two different economic and political systems had a restraining effect on the qualitative growth of trade and economic relations between the USSR and Austria, which was expressed in a negative trade balance and disparity in trade structure between them.