Closure of the Goethe Institutes in Russia: A necessary step despite the loss of cultural freedom

In dictatorships like Russia, small islands of relative freedom can mean a lot for people who - even if resistance is only possible at great risk - at least do not want to adapt internally. The Goethe Institutes in Russia could be such refuges in a country where censorship now also reaches the libraries. The closure of the institutes is therefore really bad news.

Nevertheless, it would have been wrong not to close the Russian House in Berlin because of this expected reaction from the Putin regime. The fact that this institution was still able to spread the aggressor's propaganda in the center of the German capital four and a half years after the attack on Ukraine was an unbearable situation.

In any case, the existence of the Goethe Institutes in Russia, which were already operating with severe restrictions, only depended on the arbitrariness of those in power. They have proven on many occasions that they have no scruples about cutting even seemingly non-political cultural connections, for example when they declared the German Academic Exchange Service an “undesirable organization” at the beginning of the year. No matter how much one may regret the end of the Goethe Institute after more than thirty years of presence in Russia, the political damage would have been greater if Berlin had not reacted to the drone attack in Leipzig.