Ever Fewer Russians View Fall of Berlin Wall as a Positive Development

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 8 – Thirty years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell, an event celebrated to this day in the West as the symbolic end of the Cold War. But ever fewer Russians have a positive view of that event.  In 1999, 68 percent said it was a good thing; in 2009, 63 percent; but now, only 43 percent tell pollsters they view the fall of the Wall as a good thing.

            At the same time, however, the Levada Center found that at present only 18 percent have a negative view of the all of the wall with the remainder indifferent or not able or willing to give an answer (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2019/11/07/815687-storonnikov-razrusheniya-steni and levada.ru/2019/11/08/padenie-berlinskoj-steny/).

            In addition, the share of Russians who say they know about the event only in the most general terms is rising and now stands above 50 percent. And perhaps most remarkably, some 12 percent of those interviewed said they were hearing about the fall of the Berlin Wall for the first time from the pollsters, while 35 percent said it was an event of no interest to them.

            Sergey Obukhov, a secretary of the KPRF Central Committee, told Vedomosti that he believes there are two reasons why there has been a decline in the number of Russians having a positive view about the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. On the one hand, many younger people find it difficult to position themselves about something that long ago.

            And on the other, the international situation has changed for the worse. “One wall fell,” he says, “but another arose,” one not in the middle of Europe but along Russia’s borders. “The new ‘wall,’” he says, “passes through Ukraine, past Smolensk, and along the Georgian and Baltic borders.”