ony)? Could it have been in response to a crisis called the Cold War?
And what happened as soon as the age of crises seemed to be over? A massive (and on-going) attempt to dismantle that welfare state.
It is irrelevant whether or not policy SHOULD change outside a crisis. The reality of life is that, outside a crisis, those in power, by definition, are quite happy with the status quo and unwilling to change it.
The only chance one EVER has of significant change is in the face of a crisis which looks severe enough that it might actually even hurt god's chosen people, namely the 1% of any particular nation.
For a similar example of this dynamic, look at, eg, the history of environmental laws, or the on-again off-again history of the US' interest in alternative energy.
"The Bolsheviks (Austerians) argued that conditions shouldn't be improved at all, in fact the opposite, to encourage revolution "
The biggest danger of this is that, when you have a revolution, you never know what you're going to get. Stalin?
The only way to get the post-revolutionary results you want is to lay the groundwork in people's minds (something both the Bolsheviks and Austerians seemed to understand).
However, while you're doing this, why not try to implement what you can of the improvements NOW? That is far better at proving to people that your ideas are right than anything else. It's also better at proving that your opponents are obstructionists.
And, most importantly, if your ideas are actually wrong, it would be good to test them now so that you can fix them and not screw up after the revolution -- this was the big failure of both the Bolsheviks and the Austerians.
In short, the "why bother to fix things when the revolution is coming, let us hasten the revolution" philosophy is a philosophy of laziness, and a philosophy of intellectual laziness. It makes no sense.
Even if you that, in practice, things will not really get fixed until the revolution (a belief I am strongly leaning towards), you should still be trying to make things better NOW.
 I don't understand why belt-tightening has anything to do with addressing structural issues. Krugman's explanation is likelier — the urge to belt-tighten in depressions is strong, because many believe it to be virtuous.
If anything, I think a successful stimulus undertaken by someone who cares about fixing the structural issues is the best path. You get the economy back to growth, thereby winning voters' and business' trust through growth, and then as the economy grows you undertake some structural and regulatory adjustments.
That's what I would have done if I was David Cameron, or Shinzo Abe, or Barack Obama or Angela Merkel — stronger stimulus, aimed at things society and the economy actually want (maybe — although this is a controversial idea — distributing cash to projects by referendum to minimise accusations of "misallocating capital" and building bridges to nowhere) but cannot presently afford via private enterprise. And when the economy was growing again, I'd undertake structural reforms, and eventually start austerity programs to get to a structural or even nominal budget surplus.
 You see these types of structural reform advocates pop up in every recession in the US, including this one and the one in the early 1990s (Jeremy Rifkin's The End of Work). Either they're deluded enough to latch on to every downturn as proof of their argument before it becomes untenable to do so in a recovery, or they're thinking that the downturn is a sign that we must do structural reforms, and it's a good time to do them.
I've been thinking about this some more, and I'm pretty sure almost everyone who I know who is pro-austerity would say that austerity is necessary now because there is no choice and if we don't do it now every dollar we spend is a dollar closer to a Greek-style fiscal crisis... So it's a case not just of perceived virtue (avoiding a supposed fiscal crisis) but of perceived necessity.
The idea that now when Southern economies are struggling is the best time to make "necessary reforms" seems to be widely believed among Eurocrats and German politicians. 

The ECB is totally corrupt and operated for the benefit of Germany. Worse, people have noticed and trust in EU institutions is very very low. And meanwhile the ECB is wrecking the European economy.
Hmm, perhaps some structural reform? Maybe putting the ECB under the control of the European Parliament or something?
But that's not the kind of structural reform they're talking about. They're pushing a preconceived set of unrelated structural "reforms" which have nothing to do with the current problems. A bit like the disaster of welfare "reform" in the US.
Abe himself has said structural reforms are necessary, and the "third arrow" terminology is his own. So it's hardly fair to say people calling for him to make use of it are just trying to use a crisis.
As for the "crude Keynesianism" charge re: his stimulus- the construction has a poor multiplier, so it's perfectly consistent to be a Keynesian and still think its a bad idea. You yourself were saying it was just an excuse for more LDP construction-donor pork not long ago.
But those people are spending most of their time and effort decrying the monetary stimulus part of "Abenomics".
And yes, it was! But this is why I have some sympathy with the austerian point of view, when politics and political economy are brought into the equation. Which is why I wrote this post.
Economics is political and there seems that this particular bias against the institutions in their current form has to be made explicit and subject to scrutiny.
Are all of Italy's problems caused by Berlusconi or all of Japan's by the LDP? 
Never trust economists who use their knowledge or authority just to back up their claims on their pet issues or political prejudices is what I'll say.
Seems to fit well with the "sugar fix" critique of stimulus that while the extra spending will stimulate the economy in the short run, it is an "artificial high" that will just plop you back in the same spot when it ends, but with more debt load. Of course, it seems to me the answer to that is "that may be true, so let's avoid short term tax cuts and spending that just carries people through and instead dump money into infrastructure and other long term positive investments. Even if the short term economic boost is short lived, we'll end up with valuable investments that will improve our outlook for the future."
I'm not sure why it would be bad to "waste a crisis" by not reforming our institutions, but it would be fine to waste a crisis by not using the opportunity to build a ton of needed stuff at discount prices and relieve suffering at the same time.
The problem is that we can't just "dump money into infrastructure." It may surprise you, but many conservatives like me would be more than willing to do real investment in infrastructure like roads, rail, water supply, etc. But all of that takes planning, engineering, and other things that require patience and time measured in years.
If you just "dump money into infrastructure," then political considerations, bribes, and other nefarious things result in wasted money rather than good investment.
Said differently, the problem as I see it with stimulus spending, even at the ZLB, is that the investments that are truly worth making take a lot of time and planning to implement. Having Congress decide to spend a massive amount of money in a relatively short period of time leads to malinvestment and waste.
Of course, doing infrastructure spending when the economy is weak makes sense because raw materials' prices are low and labor is easy to come by. But that still requires careful planning.
Yes, perhaps we'll have to wait 3 or even 4 years after the Great Financial Crash for the right in the USA to come up with some (worthwhile, non-fraudulent) plans.
Or more likely, for the next GOP presidency, at which point 'Deficits Don't Matter' will be pulled out of the Memory Hole.
I don't believe anonymous at all - there are almost certainly lots of existing plans made by state and local governments that were shelved for lack of finance.
Although Anonymous has a plausible point, I don't recall that it took many years of planning to set up the WPA, TVA, and CCC in the 1930s. Is hiring men to dig holes and other men to fill them up wasteful? What if the unused resources just rot, is that less wasteful? We see long-term unemployment that seems to be producing hysteresis, rendering millions of people, who were productive, unemployable. How many schools did the WPA build? How many Post Offices? How many government office buildings? How many courthouses? How many years did it take to plan them? Are we now less competent than we were in 1933 (my suspicion is, yes)?
On the Southern European economists being stimulus skeptics I'd bet on selection bias, hands down. At least in Spain the dominant view is for scaling down austerity at home (majority predicted its failure) and some form of stimulus abroad (ECB and/ or Germany, but not a chance until september elections past).
As per Paul Krugman being despised, well, he is the single most cited foreign economist, by far, so he'll get his fair share. I'd say, barring his eurodoom predictions, he is very mainstream, in Spain.