Historians pick at Schwarzenegger

VIENNA, Austria - Historians criticized Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National Convention that he left a "socialist" country when he moved away in 1968, noting that Austria had conservative leaders as he lived there.

Some also were doubtful about Schwarzenegger's remark that he saw Soviet tanks as a child, since he lived in an Austrian region occupied by British troops after World War II. But Soviet troops were based in Austria, and critics conceded Schwarzenegger could have seen Red Army tanks if his family traveled to the Soviet zone, about 30 miles from their home.

In his convention address Tuesday, Schwarzenegger said: "As a kid, I saw the socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left" in 1955 and Austria regained its independence.

But Austria was governed by coalition governments that included the conservative People's Party and the liberal Social Democratic Party, Martin Polaschek, a law history scholar and vice rector of Graz University, told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.

Between 1945 and 1970, all the nation's chancellors were conservatives - not socialists.

Schwarzenegger "confuses a free country with a socialist one," said Polaschek. "He did not speak as a historian, after all, but as a politician."

Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman said the governor was not referring to the Socialist party but to "a socialistic style of government and governing that he experienced when living in Austria."

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