ABSTRACT
Between Germany and Russia there have been not only two world wars but momentous historical changes. Yet the confrontation between Germany and Russia was different in kind, for it involved both German fears of Russia and feelings of superiority towards the Slavs. Culturally, the two nations were for many years nearer to each other than to any other country; if Germany in the nineteenth century was the main exporter of philosophical and political ideas to Russia, then after 1917 a part of the German public began to look to Russia for inspiration. But it is not easy to summarize its achievements and its function in historical perspective; Russia is now in a post-revolutionary phase, but the revolutionary impulses have not altogether disappeared. The fate of Russia and Germany in the twentieth century has largely been shaped by two men, Adolf Hitler and Stalin. Yet the question of crime and punishment has always preoccupied the unquiet spirits in Germany and Russia.
