Many Russian Emigres in Germany Share Putin’s Soviet Values and Support His War in Ukraine and His Attacks on Western Values, Gubin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – The Russian diaspora in Germany is deeply split between its most recent arrivals who have come precisely because of their opposition to Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine and those who came earlier who share Putin’s Soviet values and consequently back his effort to conquer Ukraine, Dmitry Gubin says.

            The reasons for the continuing strength of such support by Russians in Germany are to be found in the biographies of those who came to Germany in the 1990s, the Russian commentator says. Unlike those who followed, they had a Soviet view of Europe and oppose the direction Europe has evolved (graniru.org/opinion/m.285169.html).

            At first, Gubin says, he assumed that the reason Soviet values had survived among the Russian emigres of that time was because their numbers were so large that they could form separate communities and maintain their culture, especially because they could watch Russian television.

            But more is involved than that, he continues. Those Russians who came to Germany in the 1990s had an image of that country as “the rich place of the white man” and they aren’t happy that Germany has become more multi-cultural, pluralist and tolerant. The rise of such things frightened them and appeared to them to be threats.

            Some of them even felt that Germany itself was dying because of tolerance, Gubin says.

            Then, “when Putin appeared in Russia, they loved him precisely because he said what they wanted to hear: strength, order, and the like, and they even liked the way he mocked all these new European values” because like him, they all feared that they will soon be forced to convert to Islam.

            They talked about crime among the other new immigrants, “completely forgetting that their own arrival had once upon a time caused a surge in theft … They didn’t want to return to Putin’s Russia, of course, but they liked that in his Russia, no one gives a damn about tolerance.” And Russian television provided them with the attractive idea that Putin never would.

            As a result, “when Russia attacked Ukraine,” they were ready to support him even before Russian television told them that was the right thing to do. He was finally “restoring the right empire to which Ukrainians and other small peoples must simply submit or be destroyed. They thus welcomed these imperial boots” Europeans aren’t prepared to put on.

            Obviously, not all Russian emigres who came to the West in the 1990s share these views; but enough do to be concerned. And the only way to oppose them is first and foremost to understand why they are behaving as they are, Gubin suggests.