Contribution by the Party of Labour of Austria

Dear comrades,

We would like to thank the Communist Party of Greece and the Communist Party of Turkey for organizing the conference on the 80th anniversary of the liberation from fascism.

80 years after the great anti-fascist victory of the peoples, the balance of power has once again changed to the disadvantage of the working class and the peoples. The socialist states of Europe were destroyed by the counter-revolution. The counter-revolution and the temporary victory of capitalism were accompanied by aggressive anti-communism and historical revisionism.

After the liberation of Vienna by the Red Army on April 13, 1945, the conservative Christian ÖVP, the Social Democratic Party of Austria and the Communist Party of Austria agreed on a provisional government. This was appointed and recognized as a provisional government by the Soviet military administration on 27 April. The first act of the government was the resolution of a declaration of independence, which declared the so-called connection of Austria to Germany invalid. The Social Democrat Karl Renner became chairman of the provisional government, also at the request of the Soviet Union. In 1918, Renner played a leading role in preventing a socialist upheaval in Austria and is considered one of the founders of the first republic. In 1938, Renner called for the annexation of Austria to fascist Germany and supported the Munich Agreement, in which Germany occupied the Sudetenland.

The new front line against the Soviet Union and the communists began to emerge in the period following the great anti-fascist victory of the peoples on May 9. The provisional government was not recognized by the occupying powers France, Great Britain and the USA until October 1945. When the Salzburg provincial government published a welcoming note to the federal government in May 1945, it was given a direct warning by the US army.

After the first elections in November 1945, the course was finally set for a confrontation with the Communists and a restoration of capitalism in Austria. The KPÖ was only able to achieve 5.42 percent of the vote in the first elections and was thus represented by only four members in the newly elected parliament. Although the KPÖ was still part of the government until 1947, it was unable to push through the kind of people's democratic upheaval that the KPÖ was striving for at the time. On the contrary, it finally left the government when the ÖVP and SPÖ agreed to the Marshall Plan.

At this time, anti-communism was already being cultivated by the bourgeois media and parties with the support of the occupying forces. The Red Army was defamed with news of alleged rapes and attacks against the civilian population and portrayed as the enemy of the Austrians. This propaganda fell on fruitful ground; after all, the fascist regime had portrayed the Soviet Union and the Red Army as murdering and raping “Asian hordes”. As early as the end of the 1940s, there were again attacks on Communist Party headquarters and the largest strike in the history of the Second Republic in October 1950 was attacked by thugs hired by the Social Democrats to fend off a Communist coup attempt.

Dear comrades,

Capital is trying with all its might to falsify history and to disguise the fact that fascism is not an accidental misfortune or evil, but capitalism that has dropped the mask of liberalism and democracy.

 

It was capital that financed and supported Hitler and the NSDAP from the very beginning. It was capital that had spoken out behind the scenes in favor of Hitler's participation in government, so that the first cabinet with Hitler as vice chancellor was pushed through. It was the bourgeois parties that lifted Hitler to power and solemnly dissolved themselves, while numerous leaders of the communist and workers' movement were arrested or had to go underground to avoid persecution by the fascists. It was capital that profited from the smashing of the trade unions and the Communist Party. It was capital that profited from the plundering of Europe by the German fascists. It was capital that profited from forced labor and exploitation in the concentration camps of fascist Germany.

The 80th anniversary of the great anti-fascist victory of the peoples over fascism should remind us that it is up to us communists to recognize the incontrovertible truth that fascism is only one of the forms of rule of capitalism.

It was the people themselves, the resistance fighters, the partisans and the Soviet Union, which fought alongside them, who brought down fascism. Last but not least, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the liberation of Europe from German fascism. 27 million citizens of the Soviet Union lost their lives in the fight against fascist barbarism.

It is therefore not surprising that the counter-revolution in the socialist states of Europe was accompanied by historical revisionism, which has led to the rise of fascist and historical revisionist forces today. Their breeding ground is the anti-communism and chauvinism that capital needs to secure its rule.

It is the task of the communist and workers' parties to organize the anti-fascist struggle and to link it with the democratic and social struggles of the working class and the popular strata. This can only succeed if suitable methods and tactics are developed to create the greatest possible unity and clarity among the working class and the popular strata. Anti-communism and the falsification of history by the bourgeois and social-democratic forces must be clearly rejected.