ABSTRACT
Austrian historians just focused on press reports and used few sources or only dedicated a few useful paragraphs to the Vienna Summit in broad overviews. The US Ambassador to Moscow gave his Austrian colleague Heinrich Haymerle some information on the decision-making process one month after the summit in early July. The Austrian Grand Coalition government took the opportunity to host the top-level meeting between the Eastern and Western superpowers to gain prestige in the world and to present its successful policy of active neutrality. During Nikita Khrushchev’s visit in Austria in July 1960 right after the U-2 affair and the aborted Paris Summit, the Austrian government took a new stand when it stressed its sole and only right to interpret its neutrality’s violation and rejected a Soviet guarantee. The Kremlin especially hailed Austria’s “positive” neutrality as a model for its doctrine of peaceful coexistence and even suggested moving the UNO-headquarters to the city on the Danube.
