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Its miraculous survival was one of the few signs of comfort the Viennese found in their city. Another was the battered but unbowed survival of the huge community housing projects which Vienna's Socialists had built for their workers in their brief, triumphant decades before Hitler. The gaunt spire in the center of the city and the workers' fortresslike homes on the outskirts (which Catholic Chancellor Dolfuss shelled in the bitter years of civil discord) were both symbols of Vienna's different pasts. They were also symbols of two sturdy European forces, Catholicism and Socialism. From the present cooperation between them Austria drew some hope and the strength—scarce in Europe today—of holding out against Communism.
Strangely enough, the government that tied Catholics and Socialists together got its start through the Russians. At Easter-time 1945, when the Russians were driving into Austria, Socialist Sage Dr. Karl Renner, one of the country's few surviving elder statesmen, found himself in Gloggnitz, a small town 40 miles from Vienna. The Red Army entered the town, and all Easter Sunday and Monday, Dr. Renner waited for something interesting to happen. Nothing did. Bored, Renner set out on Tuesday for a stroll along Gloggnitz' Main Street. Relates Renner with massive calm: "After a while, I came upon two men, one of whom knew a little Russian. He guided me to local Russian headquarters. Here I had an opportunity to explain some of the ideas that I had formulated to protect our people and resume normal life."
Five days later, Dr. Karl Renner was head of the new Austrian republic.
"He Is Too Young." If the Russians had hoped to find a puppet in Renner, they were sorely disappointed. A pure, anti-Communist Socialist, he has quietly boxed in all those left-wingers who might favor a merger with the Communists (for which Russia is pressing). Despite his age (76), Renner has taken a decisive hand in the business of his country. (Cracked one of his political opponents: "He is too young to be President.")
Renner is proud that Austria has a sovereign government with its own police force, vigorously reminds the Allies that Austria, unlike Germany, is to be treated as a liberated and not as a conquered nation, according to the Moscow pact.* He also keeps storming against Austria's partition into occupation zones. The quadripartition has completely paralyzed the Austrian economy. Renner also fights a running verbal battle (probably futile) for the return of Southern Tyrol, ably supported by Austria's Dr. Karl Gruber.
Chancellor under Renner is Leopold Figl, of the Catholic Volkspartei (People's Party). The party is the direct descendant of Dollfuss' and Schuschnigg's Christian Socialists, though it now favors (still a little halfheartedly) nationalization of key industries and has been purged (at least officially) of fascists. Despite public political friendship, Figl does not get on well with Renner. Unlike Socialist Renner, who comes from a bourgeois family but has lived it down, Figl comes from peasant stock and tries to live up to it. He has a peasant's stubborn strength and stubborn limitations, along with the rural Austrian's strong belief in the efficacy of wine and prayer.