Postwar Soviet occupation of the former National Socialist “Greater German Reich” generated a voluminous scholarly literature in the former Soviet Union, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the Cold War. Since the 1990s, we have come to appreciate how the opening of former Soviet archives has stimulated fresh inquiry into this topic. One of the most noteworthy works to date on the subject of Soviet occupation in Austria is the edited collection of Soviet-era documents with commentary provided by Stefan Karner et al., Die Rote Armee in Österreich: Sowjetische Besatzung 1945–1955 (Vienna, 2005). Despite the insights provided by a number of scholars involved in this project and the work's enormous value as a research asset, the collection does not fill the interpretive gap that a careful, source-based secondary work might. Austrian historian Wolfgang Mueller makes his case for the definitive monographic treatment of the topic with Die sowjetische Besatzung in Österreich. Mueller's work draws not only on an impressive range of published and unpublished documentation generated by the Austrian, U.S., and former Soviet governments, but rests also on other primary sources such as memoir literature and diaries and on his encyclopedic knowledge of the scholarly literature produced over six decades.

Mueller focuses on the perceptions of Soviet policymakers toward Austria and largely on the relationship between Soviet authorities and the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) leadership. He concerns himself consistently with high politics in all circles: the Soviet foreign and defense ministries and ministerial council, the Soviet occupation authority in Austria, the Austrian provisional and subsequently elected national governments, Austrian political party leaders, and the foreign ministries and occupation authorities of the Western powers.

The book consists of four parts and proceeds largely chronologically. Part 1 examines shifts in Soviet policy toward Austria as part of German territory and as an independent state from the Anschluss to the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement, through Germany's invasion of the USSR and the 1943 Moscow Declaration, to the cessation of hostilities on Austrian territory. Mueller's work with Soviet archival sources furnishes the reader with valuable insights that supplement the work of historians such as Vojtech Mastny, Wilfried Aichinger, William Bader, and Audrey Kurth Cronin. Part 2 offers an exceptionally, perhaps excessively, detailed sketch of the structure of the Soviet occupational authority. Mueller reveals a wealth of information that had long been inaccessible, but he runs the risk of leaving the reader wondering how this serves the book's larger purpose. To mention just two examples, references to wide-ranging unilateral “Eingriffsmöglichkeiten” (65) or “Durchführung der Kontrolle über die Tätigkeit der österreichischen Regierung” (68) without specific contextual linkages can leave the reader mired in particulars without resolution. By acquainting the reader so thoroughly with the minutiae of military and political dimensions of command and control structures and the tasks of Soviet occupation authorities, the author attempts to provide a foundation for subsequent chapters, but the organizational strategy risks overly detailed digression.

Parts 3 and 4 are the principal strength of Mueller's work, and they offer much to engage the conjecture of two generations of historians who lacked access to Soviet archival materials. Here the richly detailed treatment of KPÖ-Soviet cooperation on electioneering and propaganda efforts and on building a bridge to left-wing Socialists are particularly illuminating. For example, he identifies the extent to which the USSR subsidized the KPÖ over the years of occupation and is particularly sensitive to the client-patron relationship between Austrian Communist officials and their Soviet counterparts. Mueller is at his best when he offers fresh insights into Soviet perceptions of when Karl Renner emerged to propose a provisional government in early April 1945. He is also strong on Soviet attitudes toward the creation of a fourth Austrian party that drew to a significant extent on re-enfranchised former Nazis and on the 1950 KPÖ-supported strike movement.

Despite these strengths, Mueller's “politics from above” approach may leave readers unsatisfied in some respects. For example, the absence of a representative range of Austrian voices is not without problems. Rapes, looting, kidnappings, and formal dismantling of industrial facilities emerge in reports prepared by foreign representatives or Austrian politicians, without any sense of the range of Austrian responses. To be fair, Mueller is not a social historian. Nonetheless, greater attention to the perceptual disconnect between the reactions of Austrian civilians to Soviet behaviors and the Soviet inability to understand the KPÖ's failure to win significant public support—as, in part, a function of deep-seated anti-Communism reinforced by such behaviors—could foster important new insights into Soviet perspectives. Instead, Mueller is content to register Soviet perceptions of Austrian reactions, such as a recognition of lack of discipline among some members of the Red Army's uniformed personnel, as exploited by “reactionary and anti-Soviet elements” (115). This does not adequately unpack Soviet ambivalence: although officials in both Moscow and Austria were convinced of the Soviet system's inevitable triumph, they were nonetheless aware of the importance of positive propaganda. A second and related example is Mueller's detailed treatment of Soviet film, newspaper, and radio initiatives (96–101). Here again, one never encounters the range of Austrian reactions in comparable depth, which would have lent additional authority to his concluding assessment of Soviet policy shortcomings (235–38).

On balance, Die sowjetische Besatzung in Österreich is a well-researched and impressively detailed study. Mueller is successful in finding archival bases for assertions about Soviet policy made by leading Austrian Communist Party figures and anti-Communist Austrian politicians alike. He is equally successful in corroborating or challenging the conclusions of historians who spent decades ruminating on Soviet policy goals in Austria. It is unclear, however, whether the author intended this volume to be a grand historiographical survey or a groundbreaking, archive-based research project. In the end, Mueller tries to accomplish both tasks, but without the explicit rhetorical strategies to make either of them unmitigated successes. He does not consistently engage other historians in debate in either text or footnotes, nor does he establish how his project charts entirely new terrain. These criticisms notwithstanding, Mueller establishes himself as the foremost authority on Soviet occupation policy in Austria, and this work will be an important resource for scholars initiating related research projects for years to come.