What the eco-movement has to do with Putin

The Anastasia movement spreads in Germany. Right-wing extremist ideas are hidden behind a harmless-looking eco-façade – and the admiration of Vladimir Putin.

Back to nature, bring on the simple country life, away with the high-tech society and all its electronics: these ideas sound tempting to many people. And more and more of them are putting them into practice, moving to the country, finding fulfillment in their own garden – or leaving society altogether and founding eco-communities.

A relatively new movement that has its roots in Russia also has such an approach to life. Her name: Anastasia Community.

Their followers live without technical devices on so-called family estates, where they are self-sufficient. But what initially sounds like a dropout dream come true turns out to be a hoard of anti-Semitic, ethnic and homophobic thoughts on closer inspection.

What do the supporters of the Anastasia movement want? Is the scene dangerous? And what does all this have to do with Russian President Vladimir Putin? t-online answers the most important questions about the Anastasia movement.

The idea of ​​the Anastasia movement is based on the ten-part book series “Anastasia – The Ringing Cedars of Russia” by the Russian writer Vladimir Megre (born 1950). In it, the first-person narrator reports how, while hiking through the Siberian taiga, he meets the fantasy figure Anastasia – whom Megre describes as if she were real.

According to Megre, Anastasia is a young blonde woman. She has supernatural abilities, including a healing ray that can heal serious injuries. According to the tale, she lives in the forests of Siberia and feeds on fruits and vegetables. According to Megre’s books, Anastasia is the godlike ambassador of the fictional primeval culture of the “Vedrussians”, whose descendants would still live in Russia today.

It sounds harmless at first, but according to expert Matthias Pöhlmann it is not. “The Anastasia books are clearly anti-Semitic,” explains Pöhlmann, who has been involved with the Anastasia movement for some time as the representative for sectarian and ideological issues at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. Among other things, Anastasia tells the first-person narrator in the books about a group of Levitical priests who control the fortunes of the world. “The classic story of the alleged Jewish world conspiracy,” said Pöhlmann in an interview with t-online.

This becomes even clearer elsewhere, where the author Wladimir Megre explains the Holocaust. The Jews themselves are to blame for their persecution because they “start conspiracies against power”. In the book series, Jews repeatedly represent “evil”, “modernity”, “democracy” and ominous “dark powers”, author Kira Ayyadi also analyzes the book series in an article for “Belltower News”.

Also, in the Anastasia books, Megre describes a guide to escaping modern society: the founding of so-called family estates, where families live autonomously under a male head, eat a vegetarian diet, and take a critical stance toward modern technology and the open society. The emerging Anastasia movement took these ideas as a model.

In 2010 Vladimir Megre finished his ten-part series of books, which initially had great success in Russia. Since then, more and more people have founded the family estates described in the books. In 2011, there were said to be 700 of these goods in Russia, explains Matthias Pöhlmann in his “Handbook World Views, Religious Communities, Free Churches”.

The movement came to Germany in the early 2010s with the first translations of the Anastasia books. Here, too, “family country estates” were founded – mainly in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bavaria. The followers live there among themselves and isolate themselves from the rest of society.

“There is no such thing as an Anastasia movement,” explains Laura Schenderlein from the Brandenburg Institute for Community Advice demos, in an interview with t-online. The Anastasia scene is organized in a decentralized manner, but the goal of most of the small regional groups is complete withdrawal from society and explicit demarcation from the democratic environment.

There are now more than 20 family estates throughout Germany. However, the movement appears in public primarily through contacts and surrounding organizations, explains Matthias Pöhlmann. Although these family estates have fewer than 100 members, Anastasia festivals – around 2020 – will bring together more than 800 people. As reported by “Merkur” in March 2023, the German-language Anastasia channels on Telegram have now grown to more than 250,000 members.