to Central Europe

a speech at the International Forum “Large Family and Future of Humanity,” where he spoke about
a “European gay lobby,” and he accompanied party leader Strache at a high profile meeting with
members of the Russian Duma in November 2014. Strache denied that his party gets Russian
funding, and no evidence on the contrary has been released yet.
After heavy criticism in the Austrian press, in 2015 FPÖ was less visible in building ties with
Russia. Gudenus even skipped a meeting of radical and extreme right wing parties called
“International Russian Conservation Forum” in St. Petersburg in March 2015, despite the fact that
he had originally planned to go there. 93
Persons
“Reform-conservative” Ewald Stadler and Russia
Besides the FPÖ itself, a prominent former FPÖ politician and radical Catholic Ewald Stadler also
got involved with Russian politics in recent years. Stadler observed the Russian presidential
elections of March 2012 in the city of Samara, which brought Vladimir Putin back into the
presidential office for a third time, and rejected a critical report of the OSCE complaining of
massive falsifications.
Almost two years later, in late 2013, Stadler, who served as a member of the European Parliament
until June 2014, showed a renewed interest in the former Soviet Union. A few weeks after he had
registered a new party called “The Reform-conservatives” (REKOS), 94 he expressed his support for
Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in his conflict with the civil society and criticized the
European Union for their politics towards Ukraine. In March 2014, Stadler observed and
applauded the Russian controlled “Referendum” on Crimea and even observed the “elections” in
the so-called “Donetsk People's Republic” in November 2014. Overall, he is one of the Western
politicians who has no more political relevance in his home country, but who can be used to show
that Russia is not alone in the West in their vision of the world. However, in early 2015, Stadler has
also been involved as a lawyer with the Austrian version of German “Patriotic Europeans against
the Islamization of the Occident” (PEGIDA).
Other important power structures and personalities with Russian links and interests
The business wings of the ruling Social-Democrats (SPÖ) 95 and Conservatives (ÖVP) also lobby
for cooperation with Russia. These parties and their representatives, though, do not support
reactionary values. Their recent activities against sanctions that the European Union imposed
against Russia in 2014 seem to be exclusively driven by pragmatic considerations. 96 As a leading
ÖVP politician told to one of the authors of the study, the majority of the party, and especially the
employers and businessmen, strongly oppose the sanctions due to the negative impact on growth,
93 Asked by Austrian journalists, Johann Gudenus in the first place denied that he had ever planned to go there. The
Russian organizers, however, provided the letter Gudenus had sent to confirm his participation a few months earlier.
Being confronted with this document, FPÖ confirmed its authenticity and explained the original denial of Gudenus'
confirmation with his bad memory. Then, the party justified Gudenus' final rejection to go there by pointing at the list
of the participating European parties, featuring NPD from Germany or Golden Dawn from Greece. See:
http://www.fpoe-wien.at/news-datail/artikel/gudenus-sagte-teilnahme-beim-international-russian-conservationforum-nach-bekanntwerden-der-teilnehmerliste-ab/
94 Rudolf Gehring, the leader of the marginal “Austrian Christian Party” (CPÖ), who took part in various elections
without success, is formally Stadler's deputy in the party, which is so a one-person project. Cf. No. 319 – REKOS:
http://www.bmi.gv.at/cms/BMI_Service/parteienverz/files/Parteienverzeichnis_gem__1_Abs_4_PartG_Stand_2015_09
_16.pdf
95 E.g., MP Christoph Matznetter, the vice-president of the Austro-Russian Friendship Society mentioned above.
96 Besides the banking and energy sector, Austria has strong exports to Russia in machinery, pharmaceuticals, food,
and paper/cardboard; according to official figures of Statistics Austria, Austria sold products worth 3,193,523 Euro to
Russia, and imported only 2,294,603 Euro worth of products to Austria. See:
http://www.statistik.at/wcm/idc/idcplg?IdcService=GET_PDF_FILE&RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased&dDo
cName=024201
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