The Fatal Nexus
Germany and Russia 1925-2025
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Upon its founding in 1925, the journal Osteuropa operated within a broad force field of an eastward orientation that centred on Russia. This corresponded to the Bolsheviks’ expectations that they would be able to establish state socialism in Russia with the help of Germany’s technical and industrial potential and, in combination with German revisionist efforts, would undermine the “Versailles world system”. For the Russians’ world view and mentality, the catastrophic confrontation of the Second World War remains of decisive importance. This confrontation recoded memories of the Great Terror’s victims and the period of co-operation with Germany after the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939. There would hardly have been a Great Patriotic War without Hitler’s war of annihilation, and the Red Army would hardly have been able to advance as far as the Elbe. Only then was Stalin able to rise to the heights of world history on which he stood after 1945 and to establish the new, outsized Soviet empire. Putin’s revisionist policy is fuelled by the mental reflexes of this victory. With the war against Ukraine, which is aimed at a united Europe, he is tearing Russia from its cultural-historical moorings and deliberately destroying the measure of normality that has existed since 1989.
(Osteuropa 1-3/2025, pp. 7–34)