Administration for Soviet Property in Austria

The Administration for Soviet Property in Austria, or the USIA (Russian: УСИА, Управление советским имуществом в Австрии) was formed in the Soviet zone of Allied-occupied Austria in June 1946 and operated until the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1955. USIA operated as a de facto state corporation and controlled over four hundred expropriated Austrian factories, transportation and trading companies. USIA assets included formerly independent Austrian companies (ÖAF), factories once owned by German corporations (AEG) and former SS enterprises (DEST). At its peak in 1951 the conglomerate employed around 60 thousand people, or 10% of Austrian industrial labor. USIA was exempt from Austrian tariffs, disregarded Austrian taxation, and could easily trade with Eastern Europe despite the Iron Curtain and Western trade embargoes. The extraterritorial corporation attempted to be self-sufficient and was very weakly integrated with the rest of Austrian economy.

Occupation of Germany and Austria by the Soviet troops was followed by large-scale dismantling of former German equipment which was shipped to the Soviet Union as war reparations. Austria lost, in 1951 dollars, 200 million dollars' worth of German industrial properties (out of total 1.5 billion). Plunder continued until the early summer of 1946, when the Soviet policy changed from taking Austrian assets to managing them for a profit. The Soviet Department for Investigation of German Properties compiled an inventory of remaining industrial assets in the Soviet zone (Lower Austria, Burgenland and eastern districts of Upper Austria). June 27, 1945 the Soviet command transformed this Department into the Administration for Soviet Property in Eastern Austria (USIVA) and placed all industrial assets under its control. In 1947 the name was shortened to USIA. Its internal structure mimicked that of the Soviet cabinet, with nine divisions paralleling nine ministries of industries. No less than eleven ministries in Moscow had a say in USIA affairs.

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