ABSTRACT
The coordinates of Hungarian–Austrian relations since 1989 were set by unprecedented changes in European, regional and global history: the collapse of the Soviet empire inside and outside the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the unification of Germany and Austria’s admission to the European Union. A glance down the centuries of Austro-Hungarian relations reveals examples of everything possible in the ties between two countries: confrontation and productive coexistence, cultural division and fruitful symbiosis. After the conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955, the main features of bilateral relations between the two neighbours were subject to three main geopolitical patterns, depending on the changes in East–West relations and conditions at home. Traditional neighbourly relations revived in the early 1960s, as the post-1956 repression in Hungary came to an end. In 1985 the Austrian Institute for International Affairs in Laxenburg issued an analysis of Hungarian-Austrian relations in its ‘Neighbourhood Studies’ series.
