Postsowjetical analysis – Kai Ehlers: unconditional objectivity

When I got to know Kai Ehlers as part of my journalistic activity at the end of the nineties, he was already one of the big names among the Russian and central Asia connoisseurs in German-speaking countries.

He has been politically active for decades. Born in 1944 in the Sudetenland, he came to the 68 movement during his degree in German studies in Göttingen and West Berlin. In Hamburg of the 1970s, he was one of the leading minds of the new left, as a co -founder of the Communist Federation (KB) and as an editor of his newspaper “Workers’ Struggle”, which today appears as “analysis and criticism”. In the newspaper, he dealt with internal security, fascism, state and society.

At the beginning of the 80s, he turned to extensive trips to Russia and Central Asia, in the eroding Soviet Union. Despite the economically difficult period of Perestroika and 90s predator capitalism, it was deeply fascinated. Unlike many from the West at the time, Ehlers came to the east. You need “no left -wing pastors from the West,” he wrote in 1990.

He admired the solidarity and the improvisation art of people in economic hardship. One of his books in the subtitle means “from the need of self -sufficiency to virtue of self -organization”. Characterized by long stays in the Eurasian province, countless conversations with residents, local experts and many publications, Ehlers acquired the call of a significant analyst of the Nachsovyetic region to the Millennium. Many media owe him well -founded material. He had long political discussions with Russian experts, such as the left sociologist and oppositional Boris Kagarlizky or was often a guest in the political magazine »Russia.direct«. He was considered a capacity to his Russian interlocutors. And if you needed a expert voice from Eastern Europe or Central Asia for a special topic, Kai always knew advice.

The multi -ethnic character of Russia and the indigenous peoples living there were always important to him. He translated their traditional epic and was awarded the partial republic of Tschuwaschien as an official “friend of the Tschuwaschische people” due to its processing of the national epic. His research on Eurasia and his endeavors to bring cultures together often led Ehlers beyond the borders of Russia. With his initiative “Culture of the Jurte”, he was committed to an ecologically oriented modernization of Mongolian communities and the cultural exchange between Mongols and Germans. Ehlers also devoted himself to the role of China in the Eurasian region in analyzes.

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In his endeavor to build bridges between cultures, in the course of the strongly cooling relationships between Germany and Russia of the 2010, he saw himself a connecting element and wanted to explain Russian perspectives to the German audience, for example the continuing popularity of Vladimir Putin, especially in the older Russian population. In view of the increasingly restrictive character of the Russian government, he was accused of closer to Russia in Germany, even if Ehlers had no sympathy for the power center in Moscow.

He was not a Putinist, but had numerous contacts with the left opposition in Russia as part of his huge network. When his long -standing companion Boris Kagarlizky was temporarily arrested in 2023, he commented on this on his homepage with “the Russian judiciary beats up” and the re -publication of texts by Kagarlizkys.

What Kai Ehlers distinguished in all discussions about Russia was his unconditional objectivity, far beyond the emotionally heated current clashes. After a short serious illness, Kai Ehlers died on June 22, 2025 in Hamburg in the circle of his family.