The “Kreisky Memoirs” have a long publication history that readers of this condensed paperback version ought to know. The first two volumes of Kreisky's memoirs were published during his lifetime (Zwischen den Zeiten, 1986, and Im Strom der Politik, 1988), both of which I reviewed very positively in German Politics & Society (Spring 1990); the third volume, Der Mensch im Mittelpunkt (ed. Oliver Rathkolb, Johannes Kunz, and Margit Schmidt), was published posthumously in 1996. A condensed one-volume version, The Struggle for a Democratic Austria: Bruno Kreisky on Peace and Social Justice, appeared in English with Berghahn Books in 2000 (ed. Matthew Paul Berg with Jill Lewis and Oliver Rathkolb). This richly illustrated paperback version has been condensed to a third of the 1,337 pages of the initial three volumes, which had been republished in a handy boxed set in 2000. Oliver Rathkolb had served as a historical research consultant during the publication of the three-volume memoirs and has been the driving force behind keeping the Kreisky memoirs in print and cultivating the Kreisky legacy.

The editor(s) of both the condensed English version and this shortened German paperback version have obviously played a crucial role in selecting the materials that they deem important for posterity to appreciate as “Kreisky's legacy.” While much of volume one is reprinted in both books, only a few chapters have been selected from volumes two and three. Almost all of the chapters about Kreisky's foreign policy after the signing of the State Treaty in 1955 have been dropped for this paperback edition, especially his “good neighbor” policy with the Communist states across the Iron Curtain (what Rathkolb on another occasion has termed “Kreisky's Ostpolitik”). A long rambling chapter on Kreisky and the Jews (antisemitism, racial theories, and the future of Israel) has also been cut. Apart from Kreisky's Near Eastern policies, much of the third volume has also been dropped from this paperback edition. If a reader wants to learn about Kreisky's thirteen years of leading Austria as chancellor (1970–83), he/she will have to look elsewhere.

A final new chapter seems to have been cobbled together for the paperback edition with the title “Vom Niveau der heutigen Politik.” Here a wise and opinionated old Kreisky grapples with issues such as “growing ignorance among top politicians” (471). He deems the intellectual French President Mitterand the last “homme des lettres” in the contemporary political arena of the 1980s; he denounces President Ronald Reagan as “a man of profound ignorance” (“Unbildung”) (470). Without mentioning his failed “crown prince” Hannes Androsch, Kreisky ruminates about people who “cheat on their taxes” (476). He worries about the future of political parties and how they are financed, and castigates hatred in politics (479f).

Kreisky clearly wants to be seen as an intellectual giant in the political arena, a man of great historical insight, and a peacemaker in the Middle East. When he was thrown into jail by the “clerical fascists” in 1935/36 for conspiratorial work for the socialists in the underground, he seized the opportunity to read the Marxist classics thoroughly (“jail was my university,” 185). He prides himself on his deep understanding of Marxism and of having gone “through the analytical school of Austro-Marxism” (460).

The Austrian civil war of 12 February 1934, when the Dollfuss regime killed dozens of workers, traumatized Kreisky for the rest of his life. This is the day of the great “defeat” of social democracy in Austria (138). For Kreisky, 12 February was a more important confrontation in Austrian history than the “Anschluss” of March 1938, signaling the demise of his beloved Social Democratic Party and a “sudden loss of his home” (“Heimatlosigkeit”) (147). Kreisky pokes fun at “little Dollfuss” (145). When Austrian Nazis assassinated Dollfuss on 25 July 1934, Kreisky did not feel sorry for him: After all, he was responsible for the “execution” of workers on 12 February, the fateful alliance with the Italian dictator Mussolini, and the rise of fascism in Austria (146). Kreisky stresses that writing history means thinking about alternative outcomes (40). When Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg returned from Berchtesgaden after being manhandled by Hitler on 12 February 1938, Kreisky and people in the illegal trade unions were prepared to reconcile with the “clerical fascists” and initiated negotiations with Schuschnigg to stop Hitler from taking over Austria (194–96). But the Schuschnigg people were not interested in such efforts to establish a quasi-“national unity front.”

Kreisky's role as a bold peacemaker in the Near East is clearly one of his chief legacies. He fought hard to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table to reach what today is called a “two-state solution” that might end the Arab-Israeli conflict, but producing instead waves of terrorism in the 1980s. Kreisky personally met and promoted outcasts in the international arena like the Palestinian Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat and the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Without naming Ronald Reagan, he castigated American “counter-terror” against Libya, after the United States blamed Gaddafi for the terror attack on the Vienna airport on 27 December 1985. Kreisky insisted that Libya was not behind this terror attack (452).

Historians are beginning to analyze these historical events and question some of Kreisky's political judgments. Given such growing historical scrutiny, some of the material in the Kreisky memoirs is dated. One wonders whether the editor of this new paperback edition should not have told the reader where Kreisky's judgments are questionable, as Matthew Berg did in extensive footnotes added to the English edition.