A survey conducted by the national pollster Obshchestvennoye Mneniye (Public Opinion), for instance, indicates that 70 percent of the Russian public view Germany as a friend and only 13 percent see it as a foe.
Sixty-seven percent of the respondents assess the modern-day Germany's role in the international arena as highly positive (three-quarters of these also describe that nation's contribution to world affairs as significant); a mere 6 percent consider Germany's global impact to be negative. These findings indicate a positive change in public sentiment since 2001, when 61 percent of the pollees perceived Germany as a friendly nation and 20 percent thought of it as an adversary.
Speaking of their personal attitude toward Germany, 49 percent of those surveyed said they favored that nation while 6 percent admitted that there was no love lost between them and the Germans; 41 percent identified their attitude as indifference. One-third of the respondents (33 percent) expect most of the Russians to have a positive attitude toward Germany and only 7 percent expect the prevalent attitude to be a negative one.
Asked about their image of Germany and about notions associated with that country in their minds, 34 percent of the pollees said "Nazism" was the first word to spring to mind when they think about Germany; 15 percent pointed out that to them, Germany was above all a civilized, prosperous nation with high living standards. Ten percent see Germany as one of the European nations, with a distinctive culture (4 percent), nice people (3 percent), high-quality consumer goods (2 percent), and handsome cities (1 percent).
When asked to name any celebrated Germans they knew, 13 percent mentioned Adolf Hitler; another 13 percent, Wolfgang Goethe. Other Germans well-known in Russia include Friedrich Schiller (3 percent), J.-S. Bach (3 percent), Karl Marx (3 percent), Gerhard Schroeder (12 percent) and Helmut Kohl (7 percent).
The survey was conducted April 15 and 16 this year. A national sample of 1,500 people from 100 urban and rural communities in 44 regions across Russia were interviewed for the poll; 600 residents of Moscow were surveyed as well. The margin of error is under 3.6 percent.
