New Wine

Austria, after 17 years of occupation (first by the Nazis, then by the Four Powers), has been free a year, and reveling in prosperity. Even its politics reflects contentment: for ten years the People's Party of Chancellor Julius Raab and its principal opponents, the Socialists, have shared a happy but energetically disputatious coalition government.

In February the partners fell out over the rich oilfields and 291 other industries that the Russians returned when they left Austria. The Socialists wanted to nationalize them 100% (Austria, with only one-third of its industry remaining in private hands, is perhaps the most nationalized nation outside the Iron Curtain). The People's Party proposed that new enterprises should be 51% government-owned, with the public allowed to buy shares in the other 49%. The partners agreed to take their differences to the polls.

On Election Day a remarkable 96% of the eligible voters, mellowed by warm spring sunshine and batches of Heurigen (new wine), went to the polls in Free Austria's first national election. Result: a gain of eight Parliament seats--to 82--for Chancellor Raab's party, an increase in Socialist seats from 73 to 74. Both parties gained at the expense of the far right and left (Communist groups polled only 4.4% of the vote), but the victory of Raab's party presaged a slowdown in Austria's headlong nationalization.

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