Russia House cultural centre shrugs off sanctions to operate in Berlin

Berlin’s Russland-Haus (Russia House) is a glass and concrete memorial to better days. Step in from the busy Friedrichstrasse and visitors are transported back to 1984 when the Soviet Union’s “House for Science and Culture” opened its doors in East Berlin.

Occupying nearly 30,000sq m over five floors – the best part of a city block – the vast atrium leads to a library, a cinema as well as exhibition spaces and an auditorium for live events.

“We don’t have too many events at the moment,” says one staff member in an apologetic tone. “Because of the summer holidays – and the situation.”

Given “the situation” – Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine – the pressing question is why this place is open at all. The centre is run by Rossotrudnitschestwo, a state agency created in 2008 to maintain Russian influence in its neighbourhood and cultivate political and economic interests further afield.

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With an estimated annual budget of at least €1 billion, the agency – and with it the Russia House – operates under the control of the Russian foreign ministry. Last year Rossotrudnitschestwo was placed on a European Union sanctions list for running what Brussels called a network of “agents of influence” spreading Kremlin narratives.

The effects of the sanctions are visible in Berlin’s Russia House. Street-facing tenants, including a luxury jeweller, have moved out and the income-generating retail space now houses a nature photography exhibition.

Climb the stairs to the first – or, in Russian, second – floor and the smell of boiled cabbage leads to a restaurant where someone has attempted a cosy makeover with old-fashioned lamps and a wallful of samovars. Five customers eat pierogi and wareniki, nobody speaks and a discreet sign says “no card payments possible”.

In March 2022 all major credit card networks ceased providing services to Russian institutions. Doing business with Russia is now illegal in Europe and looking into my empty wallet, I remind myself that even buying a bowl of borscht here with cash is, technically, a crime.

That Russia House continues to operate at the heart of the German capital is down to a classic German case of diffusion of responsibility.

For most of 2022 Berlin’s state government insisted Russia House was a matter for the local state prosecutor. In turn the prosecutor confirmed it had opened a preliminary investigation into the centre’s operations, in particular language operations with which it earns income that is illegal under EU sanctions.

When responsibility for policing sanctions against Russia in Germany shifted last January from state to federal level, however, the new lead organisation was the federal customs agency. It in turn operates under the auspices of the federal finance ministry, which insists the Russia House has been “frozen” in line with sanctions. This means the building cannot be sold or its floor space rented out.

Off the record, however, officials say other concerns have to be taken into account. Allowing the Russia House keep its lights on in Berlin, thanks to special Bundesbank arrangements to allow it pay utility bills, allows Germany keep its own cultural operations active in Moscow – in particular the Goethe Institut and the DAAD academic exchange programme.

The price is allowing the Russia House carry on its “cultural” programme. Last autumn it screened films warning of the return of fascism – and a new Holocaust – to Europe. A current photography exhibition, The Path to Peace, shows the Red Army arriving in Berlin in May 1945 to cheers of jubilant locals.

An adjacent exhibition marks the 150th birthday of composer, conductor and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. Alongside the images and information about this “essentially Russian composer”, the exhibition glosses over how he fled Soviet Russia in 1918 and died in the United States. Quoting one of his contemporary composer friends, the exhibition notes how Rachmaninov’s music demonstrates Russia “rising to its full size”.

In this curious cultural catacomb, however, not a single note of Rachmaninov’s glorious music can be heard.