People's Republic of Austria

The People's Republic of Austria (officially: Österreichische Volksrepublik) was a country in Central Europe predecessor of the modern Republic of Austria. A satellite state of the Soviet Union, Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to Austrian communist leaders in 1948 and the PRA began to function as a state in 1949. However, Soviet forces remained in the country throughout the whole Cold War.

Geographically, the PRA bordered Germany to the northwest, Zapardia to the north, Hungary to the east, Yugoslavia to the south, Italy to the southeast, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west.

The economy was centrally planned and state-owned. Prices of housing, basic goods and services were heavily subsidized and set by central government planners rather than rising and falling through supply and demand.

After the Vienna offensive, Austria or Ostmark was released from Nazi Germany for it to be occupied by primarily Soviet troops. In the Yalta and Potsdam conferences of 1945, the Allies established their joint military occupation and administration of Vienna, while it granted the Soviet Union a dominating influence in the rest of Austria. In October 1949, Vienna was given to Austria and the Third Republic was formed, it being a one-party state led by the Communist Party of Austria.

The PRA was characterized by its extremely effective intelligence service, the Stasi. Along with East German Statsi, it rigorously spied on the population primarily through a vast network of citizens used as informants, it fought any opposition by overt and covert measures, including hidden measures and psychological destruction of dissidents, and it used Austrian spies to perform espionage activities in West Germany. Thus the new government began to arrest Nazi collaborators. During the existence of the PRA, thousands of people who were seen as opponents were charged with treason or participating in counter-revolutionary conspiracy and sentenced to either death or life in prison.

Collectivist policies were applied which saw all banks and large businesses being nationalized. It also saw massive levels of urbanization and industrialization throughout the country, shifting from a primarily rural country to a heavily urbanized and industrialized one. Due to its heavy collectivization, the quality of life was not as good as in other Eastern Bloc countries, although it still had a decent standard of living