Austria was to be independent and neutral, attached neither to NATO nor the Warsaw Pact and free to choose its own path.5 All four armies of occupation were to withdraw—though the Soviet Union, which had already extracted about $100 million from its Zone of Occupation in eastern Austria, secured a final pound of flesh in the form of an obligation on Austria to ‘buy out’ Soviet economic interests in the country’s eastern sector for a further $150 million.
