ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1995, Konsum, one of the great Austrian retail grocery store chains, declared bankruptcy. Meanwhile, both the German and Italian faithful in the Catholic Church will follow the Austrian model with referenda of their own. The main issues in the campaign were budgetary questions and proposals for balancing the budget. Balancing the budget in Austria has entered the forefront of domestic politics as it did in Gingrich’s United States. The first series of letter bombs were sent to high-profile people who publically favored helping aliens and refugees. After the bomb series of December 1994, in 1995 other letter bombs were sent, and some addressees were seriously injured. In the course of time Konsum had become a regular chain of retail shops, but it had symbolic meaning for many members of the Social Democratic Party.
