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Germans who opted for alternative civilian service once went to help vulnerable people in countries devastated by the Nazis, including Russia and Belarus. Then Moscow started a new war in Europe.

Source: Meduza

From 1990 through the 2000s, Germans traveled to Russia and several other countries to perform alternative civilian service. German women came too, but as volunteers. They worked in hospitals, residential facilities for people with mental and neurological disabilities, and other care homes, and helped older people in their homes. One motivation was to atone for their ancestors’ guilt during World War II, seek reconciliation with the peoples who had suffered under Nazi Germany, and do something useful for them. Meduza spoke with volunteers from those years and the organizers behind the initiative.

In the mid-1980s, pacifist organizations took Germany’s alternative civilian service program abroad

After World War II, West Germany had no armed forces of its own. It did not begin establishing them until the mid-1950s, and a military service law was adopted in 1956. At the same time, West Germany’s constitution enshrined the right to refuse military service on grounds of conscience and perform alternative civilian service instead. This service had to benefit society in some way and was performed in hospitals, nursing homes, and other social care institutions.

An army began taking shape in East Germany at around the same time. But unarmed service was not permitted until 1964. Men who refused to bear arms on religious or other grounds could then serve in construction units known as construction battalions. This was not a civilian alternative in the West German sense: members of the construction battalions remained military personnel and wore uniforms, but were not issued weapons. They could be assigned to build defense installations and other military facilities.

For many years, proving one’s pacifist convictions in West Germany was extremely difficult. The process became easier in the 1980s, and officials realized that people seeking alternative civilian service could provide cheap labor. The number of people entering alternative civilian service rose sharply. Eventually, Sergey Krivenko, a board member of the International Memorial Association, told Meduza, German pacifist organizations secured permission for participants to perform this service abroad.

One of these organizations was Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ASF). Founded in the late 1950s, it later helped men perform alternative civilian service abroad in countries that had suffered under Nazi aggression. ASF also recruited men and women seeking volunteer experience for projects abroad.

“ASF and other organizations began looking for local groups that could arrange this kind of volunteer work,” Sergey Krivenko said. “In other words, it wasn’t done through the government but through NGOs [nonprofit organizations]. In the early 1990s, a special center called Compassion was established within Moscow Memorial to help former victims of political repression. Those were hard times, with everything falling apart. Social services were only just being established. Most of the work was like this: older people lived alone and needed someone to clean, cook, and go shopping for them. The idea came up to bring in volunteers from [ASF and other organizations] to do this work. And it worked.”

The German initiatives also established contacts with other NGOs, churches, and residential institutions, sending volunteers to work with them.

In her book “Nestrashny mir” (“A World Without Fear”), special education teacher Maria Berkovich says that at the children’s home near St. Petersburg where she began volunteering in the 2000s, all volunteers were called Germans because there had never been any others:

The director of a St. Petersburg foundation that helped children and adults in residential institutions told anthropologist Anna Klepikova that when volunteers began working at the children’s home, few staff members saw any point in it. Klepikova quotes her in the book “Naverno, ya durak” (“I Must Be an Idiot”):

Hundreds of volunteers came to Russia — most of them without knowing Russian

The German volunteers who spoke with Meduza said the organizations that sent them paid for their trips. The program was funded not by the government but through donations collected by civic organizations. These funds could be used to rent shared apartments for volunteers and cover food, transportation, and other basic expenses.

Sergey Krivenko said Germans worked in at least Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, and Perm in Russia, as well as Minsk in Belarus. Their numbers were not especially large: Moscow, for example, might have hosted 10–20 volunteers a year. In all, hundreds of young people from Germany spent time in Russia and Belarus over the years.

Sergey Krivenko gave Meduza his overall impression of the German volunteers he met in the late 1990s and the 2000s:

The volunteers studied the language while they worked. Many of Meduza’s interviewees said they were supposed to take a two-week intensive Russian course in Germany before leaving. Some spoke positively about the course; others did not. Either way, they had to overcome the language barrier once they arrived.

“They came without knowing Russian,” Sergey Krivenko said. “And within the first three months, through their contact with victims of political repression… they began to speak and understand it reasonably well. It was amazing.”

Young men doing alternative civilian service came to Russia from the early 1990s through the late 2000s. Germany abolished compulsory military service in 2011 and shifted to a professional army, reducing the number of German citizens working in social care institutions. Even so, volunteers continued coming to post-Soviet countries to do charitable work.

‘I have so many memories that usually shock people’

“If you have no connection to Russia, you don’t pay attention to what the media reports about it,” one German volunteer said in an interview with the charity Perspektivy. “Of course, I had a general picture in my head: freezing winters, Red Square, Moscow, St. Basil’s Cathedral, a samovar. All the usual clichés. Growing up in East Germany, I encountered the ‘big brother’ from the Soviet Union in kindergarten and at school, but even so, I had no idea what Russia was really like. I even bought a kettle back then and brought it to Russia because I didn’t know whether I’d be able to buy one there.”

Sofia came to Russia in the early 1990s. She told Meduza that her work had been arranged through a Moscow church:

With help from the Orthodox community, Sofia then found a home with a local family. The host church also arranged volunteer placements for her and the other young people. They mostly helped older people in their homes:

Volunteers could also help at one of Moscow’s residential institutions in their free time if they wished. Sofia said about 50 children of all ages lived there, from infants to teenagers approaching adulthood. Because the facility was understaffed, some of the children were often tied to their beds. “It was a very sad sight,” Sofia said. “The home had children with severe illnesses, as well as orphans who acted as caregivers for the sick children. I tried to teach them English and German. I was just a volunteer — I saw what needed doing, and I did it.”

Another volunteer, Matteo, performed his alternative service in Minsk through ASF in the mid-2000s. He said he became interested in Russian while still in school, thanks to a Ukrainian friend of his father’s. Alternative service in the former Soviet Union therefore seemed like an appealing option. Matteo was assigned to a children’s residential institution in the Minsk neighborhood of Navinki. He also spent some time helping adults at a residential facility for people with mental and neurological disabilities in the city’s Drazhnya neighborhood. Matteo said:

Matteo also told Meduza about the institution in Drazhnya:

Matteo said that he and the women who lived in the first two rooms would usually go for walks, talk, drink tea, smoke, go shopping, dye their hair, and listen to music. “We had a friendly relationship, but naturally, it wasn’t entirely equal,” Matteo said. “Unlike in Navinki, they had their own lockers and even cellphones. They often called to ask when we were coming back. Sometimes they messaged so often that it got annoying.”

Anthropologist Anna Klepikova’s book “Naverno, ya durak” (“I Must Be an Idiot”) includes a foundation director’s account of how difficult it was to find volunteers for an adult residential institution in St. Petersburg: “Volunteers fainted, and we had to send the German volunteers home because they couldn’t handle working in the adult institution.” According to the director, volunteers found it easy to imagine themselves in the adult residents’ place and picture themselves living in the same “utterly inhuman conditions.”

“We spent three years fighting just to get the residents spoons, for example,” the foundation director said. “There were no spoons, and they lapped food out of bowls like dogs. And the smells — when we first arrived at the residential facility for people with mental and neurological disabilities, it was absolutely horrifying. People lay there all day, wet and covered in filth, in pain that no one paid any attention to.”

Like Matteo, a volunteer named Emma worked in Minsk, though she came in the 2010s. She decided to volunteer immediately after finishing school, before enrolling at a university. Emma’s mother was a historian, and Emma said Germany’s history had mattered to her since childhood:

‘Our volunteer service was in the cause of peace. And now there was a new war’

The institutions’ overall atmosphere did not strike the volunteers who spoke with Meduza as “a horror movie with no escape.”

Although conditions in the social care institutions were difficult, Sofia said the people around her were very curious during her time there, and it was easy to become part of the local community. Everyone was intrigued: “Some Germans have come here to volunteer.” People wanted to support the young volunteers who had come to help.

One volunteer told the charity Perspektivy that he ate nothing but bread and butter for his first few weeks: “Back then, every store still had those separate departments, and without knowing Russian, it was almost impossible to buy anything. It took some time, but human relationships are always what matters most. And because our relationships with people were good, I felt comfortable and quickly got used to everything. We were a good team, and people took good care of us.”

Meduza’s interviewees said they made many local friends and stayed in touch with them for years. As a result, after volunteering, Sofia, Emma, and Matteo all returned more than once to Moscow, Minsk, and other cities in the former Soviet Union.

In early 2022, Emma flew to Russia as an exchange student studying medicine. Her program lasted around six months, so she was in Moscow when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine:

Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Emma volunteered at Moscow’s Sakharov Center in her free time until her exchange program ended in the summer of 2022.