The Economist - UK (2022-04-16)

The Economist April 16th 2022 Europe 45

Russian-speakersinGermany

Truth and lies

I

ntheearlyhoursofanightinmid-

March, a man in a hoodie threw a Molo-

tov cocktail at the International Lomono-

sov School, a Russian-German establish-

ment in Marzahn, a working-class district

in eastern Berlin that is home to around

30,000 Russian-Germans. It was the sec-

ond arson attack on the school that month.

The incident was one of a series of epi-

sodes of harassment and hostility against

the Russian diaspora in Germany and oth-

er European countries. Such attacks are

rare in France, Italy and Spain, where Rus-

sian communities are relatively small, but

Germany’s 3.5m migrants from the former

Soviet Union say that conditions have de-

teriorated rapidly since the war in Ukraine

started on February 24th.

The fact that many Russians in Germa-

ny are supporting the war has not helped.

Vladimir Putin’s atrocities have prompted

some Germans with Russian roots to be-

lieve stories about Ukrainian outrages that

would help to justify it. Russian-speakers

in Germany are mostly ethnic Germans

whose families lived for centuries in Rus-

sia and who emigrated after the fall of the

Berlin Wall. Many are critical of the Rus-

sian president’s policies, but a sizeable mi-

nority remains adamant in its support for

him. On April 10th pro-Russian demon-

strators marched in the streets of Frankfurt

and Hanover waving Russian flags. A day

earlier pro-Russian motorcades had

crossed Stuttgart and other smaller cities.

It is hard to determine precisely the ex-

tent of the backing among Russian-Ger-

mans for Mr Putin’s war. Most Putin sup-

porters tend hide their views, doubtless

fearful of reprisals. These fears are fanned

by accounts on the website of the Russian

embassy in Berlin. Russian restaurants, for

example, have allegedly received anony-

mous, threatening calls and abuse on so-

cial media (“Your food tastes like blood”).

Russian-speakers are said to have been ha-

rassed on public transport. In Cologne a

boy from Kazakhstan whose parents are

Russian-German was beaten up by his

classmates, says Roman Friedrich, a social

worker in Cologne. Since the war started

the German authorities have registered

several hundred anti-Russian incidents.

“The annexation of Crimea brought out

cleavages that are deepening,” says Jannis

Panagiotidis of the University of Vienna. In

many families attitudes are split along

generational lines: the older folk support

Mr Putin, whereas the youngsters say their

parents have been brainwashed.

Lies and propaganda also play their

part. In late March a sobbing woman la-

mented in a video clip widely shared on so-

cial media that Ukrainian refugees had

beaten to death a Russian volunteer called

Daniel at a home for asylum-seekers in the

state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

But the murder of “Daniel” never hap-

pened. “I helped to uncover the fake news,”

says Mr Friedrich. The case reminded the

46-year-old Mr Friedrich, who grew up in

Russia and moved to Germany in 1996, of

Lisa, a Russian-German teenager also from

Marzahn, who in 2016 concocted a story

that she had been abducted and raped by a

group of migrants.

The arm of Kremlin propaganda is long.

Some suspect that even the arson attacks

on the Lomonosov school were orchestrat-

ed in Moscow. There is no proof; but the

woman outraged by the murder of “Daniel”

later realised that she was the dupe of a

propagandist who had told her the story. In

another video on the same platformshe

said she had been entrapped, andapolo-

gised. But the damage has been done.n

M ARZAHN

How the Kremlin seizes on hostility

toward Russians

A

day afterMarine Le Pen reached the

second round in France’s presi-

dential election, the regional parliament

in Spain’s Castilla y León approved a new

government, the country’s first to in-

clude Vox, a hard-right party. Visiting the

region for the investiture vote, Santiago

Abascal, Vox’s leader, took time to tweet

congratulations to Ms Le Pen on a “great

result”, saying France, like the rest of

Europe, faced a choice between “sover-

eignty and reindustralisation or progres-

sivist globalisation that is ruining us”.

It is easy to see Vox as the renaissance

of a far right that never disappeared even

after Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator

for nearly 40 years, died in 1975. Mr Abas-

cal calls the current government the

worst in 80 years—that is, worse than

Franco’s. Vox wants to replace a law on

gender-based violence with one on “in-

tra-family violence”, turning the focus

away from male perpetrators. It wants to

recentralise Spain, eliminating the 17

powerfulregionalgovernments (like the

one it has just joined in Castilla y León).

This makes Vox radioactive to regional

nationalists in places like Catalonia and

the Basque Country.

Vox sometimes shows a more accept-

able face. Unlike Ms Le Pen, its leaders

have not been photographed with Vladi-

mir Putin. It has criticised his war in

Ukraine and welcomed Ukrainian refu-

gees. Its parliamentary spokesman, Iván

Espinosa de los Monteros, says in perfect

American English (acquired as a student

in Illinois) that the party is not against all

immigrants. Many integrate well, and

Spain needs them, he concedes. But Vox

still wants to encourage native Spanish

women to have more babies, a point

reiterated at the investiture.

The party is a big headache for Alberto

Núñez Feijóo, the new leader of the

conservative People’s Party (pp). He is

known for pragmatism, a welcome

change to Spain’s vicious polarisation.

He has kept his attacks on the Socialists

in government to matters of policy,

saying he wants to defeat them, not

insult them. But the pp-Vox alliance in

Castilla y León means that he will be

asked endlessly about Vox. A Vox deputy

recently compared Pedro Sánchez, the

Socialist prime minister, to Hitler. Mr

Feijóo says he has not yet spoken to Mr

Abascal, but he says he has talked to

Catalan separatists and his Socialist

opponents and he would talk to Vox.

Spain faces elections next year, with

no party likely to win a majority. It now

has a three-party-plus system, with the

pp, Socialists and Vox trailed by assorted

minnows, and no tradition of grand

coalitions. Mr Sánchez broke a taboo and

governed with the radical left. Mr Feijóo

may face competing taboos: deal with the

hard right, or the Socialists.

Spain’sfarright

Vox populi

M ADRID

Ataboo is broken as Vox joins a regional government