Democracy Wins

Tiny Austria, hemmed in by Soviet satellites and still an occupied country, voted again last week to stay democratic and to stand with the West.

Two main parties fought for the people's favor: the anti-Communist Socialists and Chancellor Leopold Figl's Catholic People's Party. Nineteen years ago, Catholics and Socialists fought a bitter civil war, but since 1945 the threat of Communism has forced them into uneasy alliance.

The election became necessary when the Socialists bolted Figl's coalition because they felt they could not accept rearmament at the expense of their social welfare program.

Too weak to win but strong enough to be a bother were the revolutionary extremists: the Communists, who lost more than they gained from the election-campaign support of the Red army (and who campaigned on the slogan, "It's time for a change"), and the Union of Independents, a neo-Nazi party which won 12% of the popular vote in the last (1949) elections. The Independents talked a lot about capturing enough seats to give them a balance of power. _

Austria's 4,500,000 voters decided differently. Figl's People's Party polled fewer votes than it did in 1949, but with 74 seats remained the strongest bloc in Parliament. The victors, if there were any, were the Socialists, who upped their score from 67 seats to 73 (only one fewer than the Catholics), and in the popular vote beat the Catholics by 37,000. In Austrian politics, which are often referred to as an "institutionalized deadlock," this meant more stalemate, with both main parties bucking for the premiership. But for neo-Nazis and Communists, the result was a cuff in the face. The Independents dwindled from 16 to 14 seats; the Communists dropped to a noisy minority of four.

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