They say forbidden fruit tastes sweetest, but the bowl of borscht was a fatty and lukewarm affair. And yet, strictly speaking, it was illegal.
It was July 2023 in the Russland-Haus, a joyless concrete culture bunker that occupies almost 30,000sq m over five floors on Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse. Built in 1984, still East German times, the building still offers Russian-themed concerts, readings and language courses.
Upstairs at the back, the bleak cafe I visited enjoyed neither daylight nor customers. Its modest menu offered all-Russian food, mostly of the fried, oniony and meaty kind. A staff member said the cultural calendar was quieter than usual “because of the summer holidays – and the situation”.
The situation, then as now, is Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. I didn’t order the borscht because I was hungry. I forced it down because I wanted to ask the Berlin police afterwards if – because of sanctions against Russia – I was, technically, trading with the enemy.
READ MORE
The Berlin police weren’t interested in charging me because, they said, the issue of sanctions against Russia was still part of an ongoing investigation by the Berlin state prosecutor. Four years on, this investigation appears to still be ongoing. On the one hand, the situation is clear: the Russland-Haus is run by Rossotrudnitschestwo, a Russian state agency on an EU sanctions list since 2022 for running what Brussels called “agents of influence” spreading Kremlin narratives.
Given that, why is it still open? The German federal government says, off the record, that it is turning a blind eye because closing Russland-Haus would trigger reprisals, most likely the closure of Germany’s Goethe Institut cultural centres in Russia. Four years into the war though, the consequences of such political pragmatism are growing more uncomfortable.
Technically, the Russland-Haus is only allowed to take in the money it needs to maintain the huge complex. Many street-level anchor tenants have left, but what of the rental income from at least 115 people still said to live there?
While the prosecutor continues its by-now in-depth investigation, Berliners were shocked to learn last week that, under the guise of culture, the Russland-Haus may be employing spies.
According to journalists at German state broadcaster WDR, the Russland-Haus was mentioned in a French interior ministry document expelling from Paris the local head of Russian propaganda outfit RT, Xenia Fedorova. According to the Paris ministry document, Fedorova was set to take over operations at Russland-Haus in Berlin, which it said was “used as a cover for Russian security services”.
For German journalists, who clearly have never read a John le Carré novel, this was news. For German opposition politicians, meanwhile, the French assessment was another chance to get excited at – but not active over – a building they see as a “massive security risk in the heart of Berlin”.
So massive is the risk, apparently, that Germany’s federal ministry for digital affairs is moving two of its six departments into the building next door. This will include the department for “security and resilience of telecommunications networks”.
A ministry spokesman has dismissed concerns that the relocation could be perceived as a challenge for curious cultural attaches on the other side of the party wall.
“All recommended security measures will be implemented consequentially,” said the spokesman. Among these measures: a ban on employees using bluetooth keyboards, in case the signal is picked up by others. No word yet on how they are securing their fax machines.
This all has revived the four-year debate over why the Russland-Haus is still open at all. A prominent new voice in the debate is Steffen Krach, mayoral hopeful for Berlin’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in next month’s city-state elections.
Last week he positioned himself outside the Russian cultural centre with a cardboard sign reminiscent of Greta Thunberg’s climate strike origins. His message was less a dig at Russia though, and more an attempt to troll his main political rivals: the hard-left party Die Linke.
As successor to East Germany’s ruling SED party, architects of the Berlin Wall, Die Linke is campaigning for next month’s state parliament elections on a housing ticket. In particular it has promised to push through a popular plan to dispossess and communalise corporate apartment stock.
Critics of the proposal say it is an extremely expensive plan that will reverse, at least in part, a 25-year-old mistake selling off social housing, yet create none of the new homes Berlin desperately needs.
Among the critics of the forced buy-back is the SPD’s Krach. Reflecting that, the cardboard sign he held outside the hulking Russland-Haus read: “We could disappropriate this, dear Left Party. Are you in?”
So far, the Left Party, with deep historical roots in Moscow, remains tight-lipped about Krach’s provocative proposal. No borscht for them, so.
