Surely there is no more emphatic way that the musicloving Viennese could have taken to show disdain than to stay away from the opera. Austria is bound by the terms of its 1955 peace treaty to maintain a position of neutrality in EastWest relations. But for 9 years before the treaty was signed. Russian soldiers occupied part of Austria. The Austrians do not forget this. Neither do they forget the nightmare days after the Hungarian revolution in 1956 when their country provided shelter for thousands of refugees escaping from Communist terror. Countries on the other side of the world or peoples far remote from Russian occupation are sometimes won over by glittering Communist promises. Not so the Austrians.
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refugees