At the local level, the KPÖ has held the mayorship of Graz, Austria's second largest city, since 2021, and holds over 130 seats on district and municipal councils across the country.

[citation needed] During the First Republic, the KPÖ had little influence and failed to gain a single mandate in parliament, in part because of the ability of the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) to unite the workers as an opposition movement.

[1] In parallel with the ascent of Joseph Stalin to General Secretary in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, the KPÖ was also refashioned in accordance with the principles of democratic centralism, and party discipline was more strictly enforced.

After the Social Democratic Party was also banned, many former SPÖ supporters and functionaries, such as Ernst Fischer and Christian Broda, worked underground in cooperation with the KPÖ.

The KPÖ took part in the failed workers rebellion on 12 February 1934, which was sparked by the militia Republikanischer Schutzbund (English: Republican Defense League).

The Austrian people have lived under different economic and political conditions than the remaining Germans in the "Reich", and have therefore chosen another national development.

Echoing the thoughts of Klahr, the KPÖ expressed its firm belief in an independent Austria when the country was annexed to Nazi Germany in March 1938.

As a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, a number of Austrian communists-in-exile, such as KPÖ founder member Franz Koritschoner, were deported from the Soviet Union and handed over to the Nazis.

The KPÖ took seriously the order of the Allied Powers in the Moscow Declaration from October 1943, which called for Austria's "own contribution" to its liberation from fascism as a precondition for the resurrection of their own state.

[13] Party chairman Johann Koplenig became vice-chancellor, while fellow communists Franz Honner and Ernst Fischer were made ministers responsible for home affairs and education respectively.

Nevertheless, chancellor Leopold Figl (of the right-wing ÖVP) offered the party a ministerial position in the government, and communist Karl Altmann was made Minister for Energy.

[14] This, the largest strike action in the post-war history of Austria, started in the Steyr and Voest factories and the nitrogen plants in the American zone of occupation, and by 10:00 a.m. the number of strikers reached 15,000.

In the morning of Wednesday 27 September, thousands of pro-communist strike workers took control over ÖGB regional headquarters in Linz and Graz with their communication infrastructure.

By the end of the day police and paramilitary units forced the Communists out of ÖGB buildings in British and American zones.

The KPÖ took a prominent role in this strike, leading politicians of the incumbent grand coalition to fear a coup d'état, with the goal of the installation of a people's republic.

In the former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, multiparty democratic systems were slowly but surely being penetrated and undermined by local pro-Soviet communist parties with covert or even overt support of the Soviets, as was observable in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland.

Talks between party leader Johann Koplenig and Stalin (Sondermappe Codename: Gen. Filipof(f)) resulted in proposals of a possible division of Austria between East and West, similar to Germany.

Since the KPÖ was constantly losing votes in parliamentary elections, a division and establishment of a communist-led East Austria would have been a practical way to consolidate at least a part of their dwindling power.

Moscow wanted a guarantee of neutrality as a pre-condition for the release of Austria into independence; the country would not be allowed to join either side of the Iron Curtain.

A critic of these developments, the former KPÖ Minister of Education, Ernst Fischer (who branded it "tank communism"), was expelled from the party, and readmitted only in 1998.

Due to a continuing fall in support in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the party flirted briefly with a rightward move towards eurocommunism and democratic socialism.

[21] This, in turn, provoked the protest of the party's core supporters, who saw little difference to social democracy, and feared a weakening of the communist cause.

The KPÖ was represented in the National Council from 1945 until 1959, in the state assemblies (Landtage) (with some interruptions) of Salzburg until 1949, in Lower Austria until 1954, in the Burgenland until 1956, in Vienna until 1969 and in Carinthia as well as Styria until 1970.

In January 1990 two new leaders, Walter Silbermayr and Susanne Sohn, were appointed to renew the party and uncover errors and mistakes which were made in the past.

The company used to be able to make large amounts of money through GDR foreign trade and the protection of the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED), with the profits used almost exclusively to support the KPÖ.

The party saw no alternative but to fire all its employees and stop the production of its weekly newspaper Volksstimme ("Voice of the people", later restarted as Volksstimmen.)

Beginning in 1994 a conflict between the party leadership revolving around chairman Walter Baier and different internal oppositional groups, who had gathered themselves mainly around the newspaper nVs (neue Volksstimme, English: new Voice of the people) and the internet platform Kominform.

In the elections to the European Parliament the KPÖ ran in a largely self-financed alliance ("Wahlbündnis LINKS") with Leo Gabriel as the leading candidate.

In the election to the Styrian Landtag (state parliament) on 2 October 2005 the KPÖ, with leading candidate Ernest Kaltenegger, were able to win 4 seats (6.34% of the votes.)

This success was largely attributed to the leadership of popular town councillor Ernest Kaltenegger who raised the profile of housing as a political issue.