ABSTRACT
Austria's neutralization only became a genuine option after the consolidation of the German Democratic Republic. It was the allegedly irrevocable partition of Germany that opened up the road for Austria to neutrality and not, as has so often been asserted, Stalin's death in 1953. In the meantime, what had become clear in Moscow was that the Abbreviated Treaty, while it was no direct answer to the Stalin Note dated 10 March, was going to be exploited by the West in order to direct attention away from the German question. Austria had become a Cold War weapons testing site that the Superpowers used for their experiments to gauge how far the other side was prepared to go regarding the German question. East Germany was sovietized, yet in occupied eastern Austria, Sovietization measures were never even attempted. Nevertheless, Soviet policy towards Germany and Austria was predicated on the same priorities.
