Planck Scale Effects and Axions in Supersymmetry

The effects of possible explicit violation of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry responsible for the solution of the strong CP problem are studied in supersymmetric models. It is shown that automatic models with an abelian $U(1)$ gauge symmetry are easy to construct both in the context of fundamental and composite models of axions. It is argued that it is preferable to use abelian rather than nonabelian gauge groups in order to obtains automatic symmetries. A composite model with no exact $R$ symmetry is studied and it is found that, unlike common belief, supersymmetry is broken.