ABSTRACT
Austria’s first post-war government, the provisional state government was established under the chancellorship of Karl Renner on 27 April 1945 and functioned until the end of the year. This chapter focuses on the first of the three broad areas, within which most discussion of the Renner government has taken place — sovereignty, reconstruction, and continuity. The Austrian government’s discussions of Soviet claims show a greater range of opinion than might be expected. The chapter discusses sovereignty in three distinct perspectives. First is that of a communist attempt to ‘sovietize’ Austria; the second, which originated in the post-war communist party and has received a wider resonance since the 1960s, centres on Western policy towards Austria; the third contrasts the Allied occupation as a whole with Austrian efforts to regain its sovereignty. The chapter provides a more historical and ‘relativist’ understanding of the sovereignty issue, based on the ambiguity of Austria’s intermediate position between defeat and liberation.
