Making peace in the shadow of war: The Austrian-Hungarian borderlands, 1945-1956

Pittaway, Mark (2008). Making peace in the shadow of war: The Austrian-Hungarian borderlands, 1945-1956. Contemporary European History, 17(3) pp. 345–364.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777308004529

Abstract

This article examines the process of state reconstruction in Austria and Hungary's borderlands that followed the Second World War. This process of state reconstruction was also a process of pacification, as it represented an attempt to (re)build states on the foundations of the military settlement of the war. The construction of legitimate state authority was at its most successful
on the Austrian side of the border, where political actors were able to gain legitimacy by creating a state that acted as an effective protector of the immediate demands of the local community for security from a variety of threats. On the Hungarian side of the border the state was implicated with some of the actors who were seen as threatening local communities, something that produced
political polarisation. These differences set the stage for the transition from war to cold war in the borderlands.

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