A. I. Mikoyan's visit to Vienna in 1957: trade policy or political horse trading? The unknown pages of Soviet party-state diplomacy

The article analyzes in detail the preparation, progress, results and consequences of A. I. Mikoyan’s visit to Vienna on April 23-27, 1957 showing a wide palette of trade and economic relations between the USSR and Austria during that period of the Cold War. Based on the preparatory documents of the Soviet party-state apparatus stored in Russian archives and for the first time introduced by the author into scientific circulation, the article reveals the political ingredients that went into the preparation of the visit and the nuances of bilateral relations between the USSR and Austria in the period after the XX Congress of the CPSU and the Hungarian crisis of 1956. Also, a number of hypotheses were made as to the implicit topics of the negotiations in Vienna, which gave a political connotation to the decisions on trade turnover and related economic subjects. Finally, the chain of subsequent decisions of the Soviet party-state leadership, adopted in the wake of the agreements reached by A. I. Mikoyan in Vienna, already in the second half of 1957 and in 1958, is traced. The author comes to the conclusion that the history of A. I. Mikoyan’s visit to Vienna in April 1957 can serve as a tool for analyzing the entire set of trade, economic, as well as political and diplomatic relations between the USSR and Austria, both at the bilateral and multilateral levels (the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, “world socialist system”, etc.). For Austria, the visit was an important milestone in the normalization of relations with the Eastern superpower and the implementation of its neutral status in exchange for economic concessions from the USSR.