Post-Soviet Analysis | Kai Ehlers: Unconditional Objectivity

When I met Kai Ehlers in the course of my journalistic work at the end of the 2000s, he was already one of the big names among Russia and Central Asia experts in the German-speaking world.

By then, he had already been politically active for decades. Born in 1944 in the Sudetenland, he became involved in the 1968 movement while studying German in Göttingen and West Berlin. In Hamburg in the 1970s, he was one of the leading figures of the New Left, co-founding the Communist League (KB) and serving as editor of its newspaper "Arbeiterkampf," now published as "analyse und kritik." In the newspaper, he addressed the topics of internal security, fascism, the state, and society.

In the early 1980s, he traveled extensively in Russia and Central Asia, in the erosion of the Soviet Union. Despite the economically difficult period of perestroika and the predatory capitalism of the 1990s, he was deeply fascinated. Unlike many from the West at the time, Ehlers came to the East to learn, not to teach. "There's no need for left-wing pastors from the West," he wrote in 1990.

He admired the solidarity and improvisational skills of people in times of economic hardship. One of his books is subtitled "From the Necessity of Self-Sufficiency to the Virtue of Self-Organization." Shaped by long stays in the Eurasian provinces, countless conversations with residents and local experts, and numerous publications, Ehlers earned a reputation as a prominent analyst of the post-Soviet region by the millennium. Many media outlets owe him in-depth material. He held lengthy political discussions with Russian experts, such as the left-wing sociologist and opposition figure Boris Kagarlizky, and was a frequent guest on the political magazine "Russland.direct." His Russian interlocutors considered him an authority. And when an expert voice from Eastern Europe or Central Asia was needed for a specific topic, Kai always had advice.

The multiethnic character of Russia and the indigenous peoples living there were always important to him. He translated their traditional epics and was honored by the Chuvash Republic as an official "Friend of the Chuvash People" for his adaptation of the country's national epic. His research on Eurasia and his efforts to bring cultures together often took Ehlers beyond Russia's borders. With his "Culture of the Yurt" initiative, he advocated for the ecologically oriented modernization of Mongolian communities and cultural exchange between Mongolians and Germans. Ehlers also devoted his analyses to the role of China in the Eurasian region.

In his efforts to build bridges between cultures, he saw himself as a connecting factor during the sharply cooling relations between Germany and Russia in the 2010s, and he wanted to explain Russian perspectives to the German public, such as the continued popularity of Vladimir Putin, especially among the older Russian population. Given the increasingly restrictive nature of the Russian government, he was accused in Germany of being too close to Russia, even though Ehlers had no sympathy for the center of power in Moscow.

He was not a Putinist, but rather, through his vast network, maintained numerous contacts with the left-wing opposition in Russia. When his longtime companion Boris Kagarlizky was temporarily arrested in 2023, he commented on his website, saying, "Russian justice is lashing out," and republishing texts by Kagarlizky.

What distinguished Kai Ehlers in all discussions about Russia was his absolute objectivity, far beyond the emotionally charged current debates. Kai Ehlers died after a short, serious illness on June 22, 2025, in Hamburg surrounded by his family.