Russian textbook claims German unification was 'annexation', — DW

A new Russian history textbook describes the reunification of Germany as the "annexation" of the communist East. German historians say it distorts history and fits the anti-Western narrative of the Putin regime.

It's been 33 years. On October 3, 1990, communist East Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), officially joined West Germany. 45 years after the end of the Second World War, Germans were reunited in one sovereign state.

However, the current Russian interpretation of German reunification is causing irritation among German experts and historians. In a new Russian high school history textbook, German reunification is referred to as the "annexation of the GDR." The book was published in September 2023. The authors are Vladimir Medinsky, former Russian Minister of Culture and advisor to President Vladimir Putin, and Anatoly Torkunov, the rector of the Moscow Institute of International Relations.

According to Zaur Gasimov, lecturer in Eastern European history at the University of Bonn, the new textbook "perceives reunification in the context of then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika policy, which, from the perspective of the Russian establishment, helped trigger the collapse of the Soviet empire. It is viewed by Medinsky and the wider establishment as an important milestone in the "movement of the entire East Central Europe and the Baltics towards NATO and is and condemned as such," says Gasimov, adding that this could possibly explain "the radical change in terms from "reunification" to "annexation."