Germany’s far right loves one migrant group: Russian Germans

BERLIN — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has long stoked anti-immigration sentiment, but it’s making an exception for many Russian-speaking migrants from the former Soviet Union.

This was evident on a recent Tuesday, when AfD politicians hosted a meeting in the German parliament to shed light on the conditions facing so-called Russlanddeutschen, or Russian Germans — ethnic Germans from the post-Soviet space who settled in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“The fate of Russian Germans and their future in Germany and elsewhere is close to our hearts,” said Jürgen Braun, an AfD parliamentarian, during the event.

The event illustrated the AfD’s ever-more-focused efforts to appeal to an estimated 5 million immigrants in Germany who hail from the former Soviet Union, about half of whom are Russian Germans. Though Russian-speakers in Germany are by no means a singular bloc — and the group increasingly includes many Ukrainians and Russian dissidents who are repelled by the AfD’s Kremlin-friendly stances — their political power in Germany is broadly set to grow amid continuing migration from former Soviet states and the easing of German citizenship rules.

That helps explain why, a year ahead of a federal election and with current polls putting the AfD in second place, politicians in the party are making a concerted effort to reach Russian speakers — particularly Russian Germans, also referred to in Germany as “late resettlers.” During the parliamentary group meeting, AfD politicians called for raising pension payments for Russian Germans, and for removing obstacles for further immigration from Russia.

It is a striking policy agenda for a party that has often vilified immigrants but sees the segments of the post Soviet diaspora as a potential electoral boon.

“They are trying to become an exclusive party for Russian-speakers, supposedly by defending their interests,” said Dmitri Stratievski, director of the Eastern Europe Centre in Berlin. Stratievski said it is difficult to determine how well those efforts are working because the diaspora itself is hard to define. Polling on the subject is flawed, he added, but it seems to indicate that Russian-speakers began gravitating toward the AfD in greater numbers than the wider electorate during the pandemic.

Beatrix von Storch, an AfD parliamentarian, suggested the Russlanddeutschen — who descend from German emigres to the Russian Empire — were indeed reciprocating the party’s attention.

“We are putting forward the message that the AfD is the representative of Russian Germans,” she said during the caucus event. “They have already supported us and found us,” she went on. “Or we found each other.”

A party that is ‘not afraid to talk to us’

The borough of Marzahn-Hellersdorf on the eastern outskirts of Berlin is known for its high concentration of immigrants from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. Dotted with East German-era apartment blocks, it also happens to be among the most far-right districts in the city, according to voting patterns.

In the European election in June, the AfD came in first in Marzahn-Hellersdorf, receiving 25.3 percent of the vote, more than any other Berlin district. In other areas of the country, the AfD has also done disproportionately well in some areas with large numbers of Russian Germans.

Sergej Henke, an 84-year-old local AfD politician who lives in Marzahn-Hellersdorf and is himself a Russian German, was thrilled with the European election result — and had done his best to bring it about. Henke puts out a local Russian-language newspaper financed by the party — and adorned with the AfD’s check-mark logo — called “Let’s Get to Work, Fellow Countrymen!”

Henke, who authors most of the essays, writes on what he believes to be the dangers of migration from Muslim countries, and rails against the German government’s severing of close relations with the Kremlin following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He also stokes the country’s culture wars, decrying the German government’s supposed acceptance of “70 different genders” and depicting a country in stark decline due to progressive politics.

“Things in Germany are really going very badly indeed,” Henke wrote in one recent essay.

Henke sees his duty as “helping my people, the Russian Germans, understand the country in which they live a little better,” he recently said from the living room of his tidy home.

Henke went on to claim that the AfD has won the support of most Russian speakers in his area, largely, he said, because they did not understand German well enough to read the lies promoted by mainstream news outlets and German public broadcasters.

“They do not become victims of the official propaganda to the extent that the local population does,” Henke said.

Russian speakers in Germany, of course, have many more Russian-language choices, including social media platforms. On Telegram, for instance, Russian-language channels that puppet Kremlin propaganda on the war in Ukraine have drawn large numbers of subscribers in Germany.

The AfD first began targeting Russian speakers around 2016, when Russian state media outlets operating in Germany peddled a fabricated story about a Russian-German girl who had supposedly been raped by Arab migrants in Marzahn-Hellersdorf. The fake story was seen as a Russian disinformation campaign meant to sow division and discord in Germany — and the Russian state outlets that pushed the narrative have since been banned.

Sensing political opportunity in the Russian-speaking community following the episode, the AfD began to translate its electoral program into Russian, started hanging up Russian-language posters and put forward candidates with Russian backgrounds, said Liliia Sablina, a Ph.D. student at Central European University studying the political mobilization of Russian speakers in Germany.

“This all gave Russian speakers in Germany a sense of belonging —  like, ‘Yes, finally, there is a party here that is not afraid to talk to us,’” Sablina said. “None of the other German parties were paying particular attention to them.”

The war in Ukraine and ‘Russophobia’

Far from everyone in the Russian-speaking diaspora is enticed. Marina Kutz, a 67-year-old Dresden resident who left the Soviet Union in 1982, said she is dismayed at the advances the AfD has made in her community, describing the party as “fascists in suits,” adding: “In no circumstances, never, can they be allowed into power, even a little bit.”

Kutz has retained her loyalty to the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party that, in the 1980s, invited ethnic Germans in the Soviet space to come to Germany and had long been a party of choice in the community.

But that loyalty has eroded — in no small part due to the war in Ukraine. The AfD has taken a pro-Russia stance that has appealed to many Russian Germans, while centrist parties have supported military aid for Ukraine and a severing of economic ties with Russia.

For many in the Russian diaspora, a sense that increasing “Russophobia” has coincided with the war in Ukraine has also served to forge a greater sense of group identity — and resentment.

“In response to the perceived rise of ‘Russophobia’ in Western countries, many Russian speakers in Germany leveraged Telegram to establish channels that aligned with Russia’s official rhetoric,” read a recent report published by the Berlin-based Centre for East European and International Studies.

The AfD also jumped at the chance to further its appeal to Russian speakers in Germany following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Members of the party launched an association, called VADAR, that purports to provide legal assistance to Russian Germans and Russian speakers “who have become victims of discrimination or exclusion as a result of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.”

The approach was also on display during the AfD’s recent parliamentary group meeting.

Anyone connected to Russia, who speaks Russian, or has Russian roots was “quickly assigned to the fifth column” inside Germany when the war began, said AfD politician Denis Pauli during the event.

“That is why many Russian Germans support the AfD’s decision to take a neutral role in this conflict in order to provide a platform for future peace talks and initiatives and likewise, demand for an end to the conflict,” he said.

“With the AfD,” he added, “the history of the Russian Germans is increasingly becoming an absolute success story.”