The immigration of “Russian Germans” (Russlanddeutsche) to Germany since the late 1980s was legally and politically framed as co-ethnic migration, as the arrival not of “foreigners” but of “Germans” in Germany. Yet different conceptions of belonging among immigrants, state authorities, and society did and do not always match. Using ethnographic research material, this essay analyzes the complex entanglements of German citizenship as legal status and Germanness as ethnic belonging, which were shaped by (post)Soviet socialization and lived experiences after migration to Germany.
The immigration of “Russian Germans” (Russlanddeutsche) to Germany since the late 1980s was legally and politically framed as co-ethnic migration, as the arrival not of “foreigners” but of “Germans” in Germany.1This view was often expressed in official contexts, such as in a draft speech for one high-ranking member of the district council, which I found in the Osnabrück State Archives:
“They come hoping to live here as Germans among Germans, expecting no longer to be discriminated against because of their origin or their family members.”2
Using ethnographic research material, this essay analyzes the complex entanglements of German citizenship as legal status and Germanness as ethnic belonging, which were shaped by (post)Soviet socialization and lived experiences after migration to Germany.3 The politicization of identity, civic attitudes, and perspectives on current social processes in Germany among this group of people is of interest against the backdrop of a public discourse which often sees them as supporters of the right-wing party “Alternative for Germany” (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). Therefore, it is important to show how these citizens see the current reality. And although the illustration presented in my analysis cannot be generalized, it is nevertheless a vivid example of how the entanglement of “being German” as opposed to simply “having German citizenship” is perceived and imagined.
For my purposes, I will reproduce some fragments of one informal conversation written in my ethnographic diary and briefly analyze it. The conversation I am referring to took place in April 2024 in one Bavarian city with a man to whom I refer here as Alexander. An educated man in his sixties, Alexander, comes from former Soviet Union, is familiar with the communities’ concerns and knows the history of the “Russian Germans” very well.4
Memorial to the deportation of ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union. Regensburg. June 2024.
The Conversation
We met at Alexander’s workplace. After I explained my research interests to him, Alexander began to share his thoughts. It was very important to him that I write this particular remark down; he tried to explain to me what he knew about the thoughts of “Russian Germans” who are angry, dissatisfied, or disappointed with Germany as a nation state.Therefore, what follows is not his “first-person narrative”, but rather his mediating knowledge for me to better grasp such narratives.
When “Russian Germans” came here in the 1990s, Alexander started his explanation, their understanding of the state was strongly influenced by their preconceived expectations. “They had a very pronounced understanding of the German state as a state governed by the rule of law. [But now] the German state is discrediting itself. It is delegitimizing itself” (this and the following quotes are from my field diary, April 30, 2024).
Here Alexander was referring to the existing ambiguous relation between German federal law and EU law. This affects various areas: the abolition of currency independence (abandoning Deutsche Mark for the Euro), the handling of the financial crisis since 2008, and migration policy since 2015.
Alexander hinted at perceived similarities between the EU and the USSR as entities without restrictively defined borders, with a common currency, common structures and values. He used an interesting combination of words, “E(U)SSR” (EU + USSR), to describe the similarity but also political ambiguity and the somewhat intransparent politics of both unions.
“The situation with today’s EU and the European Parliament is similar to the situation in the Soviet Union back then. At that time, one party in Moscow dictated the political direction for the various republics at a party meeting, and the people at the republic level often had no idea about it. These people [Russian Germans] say: ‘We see it as our civic duty to warn the state [Germany] of dangers’. And current […] EU policy represents such dangers for them.It is neither transparent nor predictable.”
When I entered our conversation into the diary later, I described my impression regarding its content as follows: “The main ‘misfit’ [I noted the word acdena in Georgian] in understanding belongings [among these citizens] lies on the level of national and supranational structures.”
Following Mathijs Pelkmans and Giorgi Cheishvili (2026), we can use “misfit” as an analytical category for capturing polyvalent social realities. According to these authors “a verb, ‘to misfit’ can be used as the equivalent of ‘to fail to fit, to fit badly; to be unfitting or inappropriate for (a person, etc.) […] Whether used as noun or verb, the word implicitly invokes its counterpoint, that is, objects or persons that ‘fit’ or are made ‘to fit.’” (Pelkmans and Cheishvili 2026: 6)
A further case of misfitting arises when it comes to the expectation how “Russian Germans” live and feel among Germans. According to Alexander, the “Russian Germans” were very proud of their Germanness. They had sacrificed a great deal for preserving it.
“Every nation has its heroes [he uses the Russian word герой (geroy)]. They felt like they were such heroes [because of their sacrifices], but since they have come here [to Germany], they are more and more bitter and disappointed by how ‘un-German’ (undeutsch) Germany is.This ‘feeling German’ has an essentialist component. It creates an affective bond with the term. It’s not just pragmatic, as might be the case for some migrants: Having a German passport because that passport makes many things possible. It’s not a strategic choice, but essential. One died for being German, for remaining German. If you ask a German [citizen from current Germany] whether he would go to prison for years for being German. He wouldn’t. My father did. He did.”
This passage discusses the complex interplay between citizenship and Germanness. The “misfitting components” between essentialist and constructivist conceptions of what Germany is or should be as a country and a nation becomes clearly apparent here.The expectations with which the “Russian Germans” arrived misfit with the current reality. According to Alexander’s account, ethnic Germans from the former USSR have a much stronger emotional and affective bond with the German state as a nation-state than some citizens holding German citizenship today. It entails the readiness to sacrifice. In this context, a far more complex concept of belonging emerges than the mere political or geographical definition of a unit (state or country). It can be more accurately described as a general understanding of an ethnically defined nation.
Some Concluding Thoughts
In this essay, I addressed and discussed the complexity of intertwined belongings. As an example, I used the ideas and perceptions among “Russian Germans” in Germany about what the German state should be as against what it is. My conversation with Alexander revealed the following major misfit:
While Germany was still invested in ethnic conceptions of belonging in the 1990s, it has become less and less so since then. Examples include EU enlargement, Germany’s self-recognition as a country of immigration, and the possibility of dual citizenship. This has increased the sense of misfit between Russian-German essentialized notions of belonging that grew out of their Soviet experience and which emphasize sacrifice for the nation, and the increasingly common post-national and European conceptions that have come to prevail in German political discourse.
References
Pelkmans, M., & Cheishvili, G. (2026). Misfits: Towards a critical analysis of the in-between. Critique of Anthropology, 46(1), 3-19.
Author Bio
Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne holds a PhD in social anthropology and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European studies (IOS) in Regensburg. From March 2021 to March 2024, she was a researcher at the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) in Vienna. She has obtained her PhD degree from the University of the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. Simultaneously Aivazishvili-Gehne was an associate Member at the Max-Planck- Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle.
Research interests: political anthropology; citizenship; borders; post-socialist transformations; migration; diasporic milieus; belonging.
1“Russian Germans” refers to ethnically German people from the former USSR. The term is ascriptive and imprecise, as these people come not only from Russia, but from various regions of the former Soviet Union. For this reason, I put the term in quotation marks.
2 “Sie kommen mit der Hoffnung, hier als Deutsche unter Deutschen leben zu können. In der Erwartung, nicht mehr wegen ihrer Herkunft oder ihrer Familienangehörigen diskriminiert zu werden.” NLA OS, Dep104I, Ref. 2018/102 No. 4. “Exemplary Integration of Immigrants,” May 11, 2001. The archival investigation is based on my previous research funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture and the Volkswagen Foundation. During this period, I was employed as a postdoc at the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) at the University of Vienna.
3 The research material from my ethnographic diary on which I am focusing is being carried out at the “Centre for Culture and Remembrance. Expellees and Resettlers in Bavaria” (FHAB) and financed by the Free State of Bavaria with a special grant [Project TG 78 “Culture and Remembrance. Expellees and Resettlers in Bavaria”]
4 For data protection reasons, I will neither name the city nor give precise details about the education, job or even country of origin of my interlocutor.
Thumbnail picture: Advertising posters for "Europe Day" in Bavaria. Regensburg. April 2024, Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne
