Wolfgang Mueller

University of Vienna | UniWien · Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte

In political history, emotions are booming. Two recent biographies, Susanne Schattenberg's Leonid Breschnew: Staatsmann und Schauspieler im Schatten Stalins (Berlin: Boehlau Verlag, 2017) and Friederike Schotters's Frankreich und das Ende des Kalten Krieges: Gefühlsstrategien der équipe Mitterrand 1981–1990 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), illustrate th...

Franz Cede, and Christian Prosl. Ambition and Reality: Austria's Foreign Policy since 1945. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2017. Pp. 171. - Volume 50 - Wolfgang Mueller

Das Nachkriegsjahrzehnt stellte nach NS-Herrschaft und Weltkrieg eine Phase des Wiederaufbaues, aber auch Strukturwandels der österreichischen Medienlandschaft dar. Zwar hinterließ die durch die vier Besatzungsmächte ausgeübte Zensur relativ geringe Spuren; dafür trug die Zonenteilung des Landes zur mittelfristigen Dezentralisierung der österreichi...

This article is part of the special section titled From the Iron Curtain to the Schengen Area, guest edited by Wolfgang Mueller and Libora Oates-Indruchová.

The Soviet view of neutrality was shaped by political rather than legal considerations. Whether neutrality was rejected or promoted by the USSR and how it was defined depended on the concept’s usefulness for Soviet foreign policy. To advance Soviet interests, a special doctrine of neutrality was created with obligations that Soviet leaders apparent...

Auf seinem Weg zur deutschen Einheit hatte Michail Gorbatschow den von allen Staatsmännern weitesten Weg zu überwinden, 1 der vor allem zwei Hürden barg: die Zustimmung zum Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Deutschen in bezug auf eine mögliche Wiedervereinigung (Januar bis Februar 1990) und in bezug auf die freie Bündniswahl (Mai bis Juli 1990). Die Indiz...

This article argues that permanent neutrality alone is insufficient for explaining the friendly relationship between the USSR and Austria after 1955. Comparing Austria's relations with the USSR to another Western neutral, Switzerland, shows that maintaining permanent neutrality was not sufficient for establishing a special relationship with the Eas...

Stelzl-MarxBarbara. Stalins Soldaten in Österreich: Die Innensicht der sowjetischen Besatzung 1945–1955. Vienna/Munich: Böhlau/Oldenbourg, 2012. Pp. 865. - Volume 45 - Wolfgang Mueller

This article draws on Soviet archival documents as well as Western and Russian publications to analyze the background of Leonid Brezhnev's announcements of 1972 regarding the Soviet Union's possible recognition of the European Economic Community (EEC). The analysis takes into account various factors including the integration process, détente, and S...

A large number of similarities can be seen between Soviet and communist activities following World War II in Germany and Austria and in East Central European countries such as Hungary, which were later entirely incorporated into the Soviet bloc. In both cases, Moscow-trained communists aimed at establishing “people’s democracy” and took a leading r...

The second volume of the German-Russian Historical Commission's irregularly published Mitteilungen contains topical essays, reports on current projects, and relevant documents (e.g., the Archival Law of the Russian Federation of 2004). The first part of the volume consists of the papers of a workshop organized by the commission in 2002 concerning t...

This article reassesses on the basis of recently discovered documents from Russian archives Soviet planning and policy on and in Austria after World War II. Given its small size and its location at the periphery of the Soviet orbit, Austria never had a high priority for Stalin. Due to its quadripartite occupation by the allies, the country could no...

Věnováno Dr. Geraldu Stourzhovi k jeho osmdesátým narozeninám