USIA

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USIA ( УСИА , abbr. Of Russian Управление советским имуществом в Австрии , management of Soviet property in Austria ) was in the Soviet zone of occupation in Austria from 1946 to 1955 a network of more than 300 companies from the Soviet Union as a former property of the German Reich had been confiscated. The USIA was directed by Soviet authorities and had to comply with the guidelines of the Soviet government. The profits generated benefited the occupying power. The basis for this were the Potsdam resolutions , which allowed the occupying powers to collect reparations in the zone allocated to them. USIA companies employed over 53,000 people.

History of the USIA

Management by the Soviet occupying power

Trattnerhof in Vienna

The USIA group was founded in 1946 as USIWA ("Uprawlenje Sowjetskim Imuschestwom w Awstrij" = administration of Soviet assets in Austria). The company was managed from the Trattnerhof in Vienna . The central commercial office was set up on Schwarzenbergplatz for business operations with third parties. The USIA had to follow the guidelines of the Soviet government, but was otherwise run according to market economy principles. The companies in the USIA were beyond Austria's influence; the Soviet occupying power did not allow outsiders to look inside.

The end result of the treatment of USIA operations was to obtain as much capital as possible from them. The company's profits were withheld by the Soviet Military Bank. The taxes were paid to the Soviet administration (according to Austrian tax rates). The companies received loans from the Soviet Military Bank at interest rates of up to 20%.

Operations in the USIA group

Significant parts of the key industries in Eastern Austria belonged to the USIA. The following companies, among others:

Significance for the population and employees

The USIA companies employed over 53,000 people. The USIA paid its employees well and was often very accommodating to works councils. The KPÖ had an above-average presence at locations of the USIA companies .

The USIA operations were centers of the 1950 October strike . But there were also conflicts with the management because the outstanding effects had a negative effect on the operating result. After the October strikes, hundreds of communists who had been laid off in their factories and who were mostly only able to find work in the USIA factories got a job.

Furthermore, the USIA businesses were popular contact points for the Austrian population, as the prices of many everyday necessities in the USIA shops were considerably below the prices charged on the free market.

A typical feature of places with USIA companies was - even long after the withdrawal of the Soviet troops - the existence of company kindergartens at times when kindergartens were still few and far between in Austria.

Consequences for businesses

Quite a few of the Soviet managers employed in the USIA leadership saw themselves in a constant conflict between the financial and material claims of their superiors on the one hand and the impending bankruptcy on the other. There was a lack of reinvestment in the factories as well as rationalization and modernization. At the time of the return of the USIA operations to Austria, they were lagging behind the rest of the Austrian economy as a result of a corporate policy designed to maximize profits - some of them ripe for bankruptcy.

Effects on the Austrian economy

USIA stores in Vienna's Porrhaus, corner of Resselgasse and Operngasse (May 1955)

Due to the prices in the USIA stores, which were well below the market, they exerted strong competitive pressure on the other retail stores in the free economy. The low prices were made possible by the fact that the USIA stores were not bound by Austrian regulations such as the trade regulations or the shop closing time regulations and did not have to pay customs duties , sales tax and consumption taxes . In the 1950s, USIA stores even offered relatively luxury goods such as nylon stockings and Swiss watches at very reasonable prices.

With the help of the re-import of goods that had been re-declared in communist countries, the Soviet administration was able to achieve another significant profit. USIA assets such as spirits and tobacco products were also illegally transferred to the black market in trucks with Soviet license plates - which Austrian authorities were not allowed to check .

The USIA's pricing policy was presented as a friendly action by the Soviet Union for the Austrian people, who were no longer at the mercy of the supposedly overpriced prices of the capitalist free market. The USIA's generous wages policy was also pointed out. In contrast, negative phenomena for the free economy and organized smuggling were portrayed as symptoms of the rotten Western system.

End of the Soviet administration of the USIA in 1955

The question of the transfer of USIA companies to the USSR has long been an obstacle to the conclusion of the state treaty between the USSR and Austria. An agreement was only reached during the talks in Moscow from April 12th to 15th, 1955, which brought about the decisive breakthrough to the State Treaty of May 15th. The USSR transferred the former "German property" in their possession to Austria in return for the following transfer payments: all rights to the oil complex in return for a delivery of 10 million tons of crude oil (later reduced to 6 million tons of crude oil) (value: 200 million US dollars ); the DDSG property in eastern Austria for 2 million US dollars; For the rest of the former "German property", a transfer fee of 150 million US dollars was set to be paid within six years.

Many of the former USIA companies were nationalized after they were returned to Austria. According to the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, the USIA had around 25,000 workers and 4,000 salaried employees, which represented over a quarter of the industrial jobs in Lower Austria. The most important sectors were machine, steel and iron construction, foundry, mining, iron making industry, leather processing, glass and metal industry.

Other Soviet controlled establishments in Austria

Also under Soviet control - but not within the USIA - the Soviet Mineral Oil Administration (today OMV AG ), with approx. 7,800 employees and the Danube Steamship Company with approx. 1,600 employees , came under the so-called Order No. 17 of Colonel General Vladimir Kurassov .

See also

literature

  • Gerhard Baumgartner: The USIA companies in Burgenland . In: Felix Tobler (Ed.): Liberate - occupy - exist. Burgenland from 1945 - 1955 . Proceedings of the symposium of the Burgenland Provincial Archives from 7th - 8th April 2005. Office of the Burgenland Provincial Government, Section 7: Culture, Science and Archives, Main Section Provincial Archives and Provincial Library, Eisenstadt 2005, ISBN 3-901517-49-9 , ( Burgenland Research 90), pp. 161-176.
  • Otto Klambauer , Ernst Bezemek : The USIA companies in Lower Austria. History, organization, documentation . Self-published by the Lower Austrian Institute for Regional Studies, Vienna, 1983, ( studies and research from the Lower Austrian Institute for Regional Studies 5).
  • Hubert Steiner : The USIA companies, their foundation, organization and return to the Austrian sovereign administration . In: Communications of the Austrian State Archives 43, 1993, ISSN  0078-3676 , pp. 206-220.
  • Ernst Trost : Figl of Austria , Molden-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Vienna et al. 1972.
  • Walter M. Iber: The hidden reparations. On the economic exploitation of Austria by the Soviet Union 1945-1955 / 63 . in: Wolfram Dornik / Johannes Gießauf / Walter M.Iber (ed.): War and economy. From antiquity to the 21st century. Studien Verlag, Innsbruck-Wien-Bozen 2010 ISBN 978-3-7065-4949-3 , pp. 555-574.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Die Presse: Austria after '45: A state within a state called USIA , accessed on November 9, 2013
  2. ↑ Entry on USIA in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
  3. ↑ http://historisch.apa.at/cms/apa-historisch/dossier_print.html?&dossierID=AHD_19550831_AHD0001
  4. ↑ Erste Österreichische Maschinglasindustrie AG in RegiowikiAT accessed on January 2, 2014
  5. ↑ The USIA stores in the OoeGeschichte.at forum
  6. ↑ http://www.demokratiezentrum.org/wissen/wissenslexikon/usia.html
  7. ↑ Development of the industry in Lower Austria ( Memento from March 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Due dates . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1948 ( online ).