Civil War in Austria

After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 and the establishment of a parliamentary republic (initially, German Austria ), the political life of the First Austrian Republic turned into a confrontation between two irreconcilable political forces - the Social Democrats , who relied on the urban proletariat (primarily in Vienna ), and the bloc right-wing parties, supported by the Catholic Church, the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie ( Christian socialists , later the Patriotic Front ).

In addition to parliamentary parties, both left and right forces had combat organizations consisting of thousands of front-line soldiers of World War I :

Left

• “Republican Defense Union” ( German: Republikanische Schutzbund , Republican Schutzbund )

Rights

• " Union of Defense of the Homeland " ( German: Heimwehr ) - militia.
• “The Union of Front-line Soldiers "( German: Frontkämpfervereinigung )

Clashes between the two sides have been commonplace since 1921 ; Until 1927, there were no casualties.

During a demonstration in May 1927, ultra-right militants from the Union of Front-line Soldiers fired on a left-wing demonstration in Schattendorf ; World War I veteran and eight-year-old child were killed.

In July, three people accused of murder were acquitted by a court of which caused a national strike and mass protests in Vienna, which on July 15 turned into open clashes between protesters and the schutzbund on the one hand and the police and the firewall on the other. The crowd stormed and set fire to the courtroom, the police responded with a fire to defeat - 89 people were killed (85 of them were left-wing demonstrators), more than 600 people were injured.

After the events of 1927, new right-wing combat organizations arose:

• in 1927, the Freedom League ( German: Freiheitsbund ) to protect against the actions of the Social Democrats.
• in 1929/30 Bauernver "( German: Bauernwehr ) -" Peasant Police ", renamed in 1932 the" Green Front ", German. Grüne front
• in 1930 " Austrian attack aircraft ”( German Ostmärkische Sturmscharen ) is a clerical fascist , but not pro-German organization.

Despite this, on the whole, the end of the 1920s was quite successful for the Austrian economy, which allowed raising wages and building municipal housing for workers and public servants. The Great Depression , which began at the end of 1929 , led to mass unemployment and put an end to social programs, which again aggravated the struggle between the right and left.

Right-wing ideologists have spread in society the view that “Western democracy” and the parliamentary form of state are unacceptable to Austria; in May 1930, a right-wing militant organization, Heimver, took the so-called “ Korneuburg oath” of the struggle to completely eliminate parliamentary democracy and replace it with “patriotic power” in broad alliance with the public and the church. The Social Democrats won the local elections of 1932 in Vienna; the losers of the right-wing forces feared defeat in the national parliamentary elections, and headed for the seizure of power by force and the abolition of democratic elections in general. This course was actively supported by Benito Mussolini .

1933 Coup

In February 1933, there was a parliamentary crisis in connection with the adoption of the law on minimum wages. After the parliamentary hearings came to a standstill and three consecutive speakers resigned, despite the opportunity to overcome the crisis by parliamentary methods, Chancellor Engelbert Dolphus (Christian Social Party) dissolved parliament on March 4 . This was followed by a series of actions that established the corporate dictatorship of a group of conservatives equally distant from both Austrian leftists and German nationalists:

• March 7 - the law of war adopted in 1917 ( German Kriegswirtschaftliches Ermächtigungsgesetz ) was resumed, prohibiting mass rallies, assemblies, establishing censorship and state control over the economy;
• March 12 - Vienna Cardinal Innicer publicly urges Catholics to support the coup. The Church, with minor reservations, has become one of the pillars of the new regime;
• On March 15 , under the cover of the 1917 law, the police obstructed the reunification of the parliament (the Christian Socialists boycotted the reunion, and only leftists and “great Germans” who supported unification with Germany came to parliament);
• March 31 - the Republican Defense Union (Schutzbund) is outlawed;
• April 10 - the republican law on the separation of the school from the church was repealed; author of this law, Minister of Education Otto Glockel , ended up in the Wollersdorf concentration camp and died shortly after liberation in 1935 ;
• May 10 - all elections, from municipal to federal , were canceled;
• May 20 - the “ Patriotic Front ” was founded, a broad coalition of right-wing forces and the church, the support of the Dolphus regime, an ultra-right Austro - fascist (but not Nazi) political party;
• May 26 - the activities of the Communist Party are prohibited;
• July 19 - the NSDAP is banned;
• August 16 - the state and the church concluded a concordat (canceled by the German side after the Anschluss);
• September - urgent construction of concentration camps;
• October 28 - Pope Pius XI declared support for "outstanding statesmen of Austria";
• November 11 - the death penalty for murder, arson, vandalism, destruction of other people's property was restored.

Due to the fact that the Austrian left was the most obvious threat to the authorities, the Dolphus regime immediately arrested many left activists. After the ban of all other political parties, the liquidation of parliament and democracy, the Patriotic Front occupied a monopoly position in Austrian politics. The activities of the Communists were firmly driven underground, but the Social Democrats and trade unions remained an influential force.

On February 12, 1934, a search at the headquarters of the Social Democrats in Linz provoked an armed clash between government forces and militants of banned left organizations. The conflict swept large cities in Austria, primarily Vienna, where left-wing militants barricaded themselves in the workers' quarters. In the 1920s , many cheap municipal housing was built in Vienna ( German: Gemeindebauten ), and overpopulated working new buildings, such as Karl-Marx-Hof , Zandleitenhof , Schlingerhof , became the strongholds of the uprising. Police and ultra-right-wing militants (of the "Patriotic Front") occupied neighboring quarters, and gunfire began - first with small arms.

On February 13, the army ( German Bundesheer ) intervened in the conflict on the side of the far right. Leftist forces were routed by artillery fire. By the end of February 13, the strongholds of the Social Democrats in Vienna and Upper Austria ceased resistance.

On February 14, the Vienna district of Floridsdorf surrendered, where a fire brigade led by Georg Weisel joined the rebels , which the government forces managed to defeat only by using suffocating gases.

Until February 15, leftist resistance continued in Judenburg and Brook en den Moore.

It is believed that by February 16 all the centers of the uprising were suppressed.

In Vienna, more than 200 people died on the left side alone, and in all, up to 1,600 people died and went missing on both sides of the country. The government carried out mass arrests, filling the Wollersdorf concentration camp built in 1933. Following the uprising, the Social Democratic Party and its associated organizations were banned and defeated. The leaders of the Social Democrats fled to Czechoslovakia . Those remaining in the country were shot by the mass-scale military courts, which had the right to punish death by hanging . The first hanged man “in three days” was Peter the Strauss, the foolish dwarf accused of arson; dozens of prominent Social Democrats and trade union officials were hanged behind him. For individual defendants, who were valuable to Christian Socialists, the possibility of pardon was retained.

By removing the Social Democrats and trade unions from the political scene, the Dolphus government consolidated the union of conservative forces and the church. On April 30 - May 1, 1934, the last meeting of lawmakers in the history of the first republic took place, completely under the control of the Dolphus regime, at which the so-called May Constitution of was adopted borrowed from the Mussolini regime. The constitution, approved on May 1, 1934, replaced the state slogan of the first republic, “Austria is a democratic republic. The right belongs to the people "with the slogan of an estate clerical state:" In the name of God Almighty, granting all rights, the Austrian people received this constitution for their Christian German union state, built on an estate principle "( German: Im Namen Gottes, des Allmächtigen, von dem alles Recht ausgeht, erhält das österreichische Volk für seinen christlichen deutschen Bundesstaat auf ständischer Grundlage diese Verfassung ).

In July 1934, Dolphus was killed by militants of the Austrian SS , but the regime he created, known as Austrofascism , lasted until the 1938 Anschluss .

In the politics of post-war Austria, as well as until 1933, the confrontation between the Social Democrats and the Conservatives (the present Austrian People's Party ) remained. However, the founders of the Second Austrian Republic ( 1955 ), not wanting to repeat the events of 1934, laid down provisions in the country's constitution that did not allow the parliamentary majority to remove the minority from power and seize all branches of power in the country. The so-called doctrine of proportional representation ( German Proporz ) requires that ministerial posts be distributed among parties in proportion to their representation in parliament. This principle, having played a positive role during the post-war economic recovery, gradually negated the political struggle, since the distribution of posts at the middle and lower levels of power, fixed by inter-party agreements, has not changed for decades and practically does not depend on the election results or on the public opinions.

Criticism of this system reached its climax in the 1990s (represented by Jörg Heider ). Austria's integration into the European Union has largely weakened the negative influence of the proportional system, as the regulation of individual industries has passed from the national government to pan-European bodies.

• Ilya Erenburg . The Civil War in Austria - M .: Publishing House "Soviet Literature", 1934.
• The story of the participants of the Floridsdorf battles