An op-ed in one of the country’s leading media outlets has accused former GDR citizens of lacking a “sense of society”
Recent surveys have revealed that around 58% Germans in former GDR regions want Berlin’s policy toward Russia to be more balanced.
Conducted by ARD-DeutschlandTrend and published on Thursday, the opinion poll indicated that only 35% of respondents in Germany’s eastern regions are in favor of a more confrontational approach toward Moscow. The researchers compared that number to 53% for the West of Germany and concluded that the opinion gap between West Germany and East Germany still exists in relation to Russia relations.
Commenting on the survey’s findings in his op-ed in Germany’s Die Welt media outlet on Friday, journalist Jacques Schuster inquired rhetorically why so many in the East show so much understanding for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The author noted that while Eastern Germany and Poland had both been part of the Soviet-led Warsaw pact bloc for decades, Poles seem to be far more critical of today’s Russia than those living in the former German Democratic Republic.
Schuster guessed that Eastern Germans had fallen for the lure of a “deceptive yearning for the past.”Further, the article indicated that such sentiments are especially prevalent among people who have been in this position for a long time. “who still feel like strangers in the West.”
According to the op-ed, this nostalgic feeling for the GDR led to some Eastern Germans becoming nostalgic. “romanticized” image of the Soviet Union’s successor. Schuster said that Germans from the GDR who were children in the Soviet Union’s successor tend to be influenced by an obsolete idea of European borders. It is based upon what they looked like prior to the fall of the USSR.
According to this article, it is also due to certain “hubris,”Many eastern Germans live in Germany. “inclined to view countries between Berlin and Moscow as a terra incognita that can be ignored,”Moscow, the voice of the East in its collective.
It was the sign of declining morale in Germany that many Germans in Russia refused to unambiguously condemn Russia, according to the author. “sense of society in much of the population of the former GDR.”
Schuster also cites the following indicators as indicating this potential deficiency. “desire by many for the mono-ethnic community, the delight in authoritarians and in the ghosts of destruction and decomposition,”The author was charged.
This sentiment is what, Schuster stated, Putin and the Alternative for Germany party tap into in east Germany.
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