Pro-Russian Telegram channels are actively spreading claims about the alleged results of a sociological survey conducted by the German institute Forsa ahead of German Unity Day. According to these claims, more than a third of Germans are supposedly dissatisfied with the country’s reunification and want the Soviet Union to be restored. However, this is a distortion of the facts.

In reality, the published figures were taken from a different survey conducted by Infratest dimap. The Forsa Institute also studied this topic, but none of its polls mentioned any desire to return to the USSR. This manipulation was debunked by experts from VoxCheck.

German Unity Day is a public holiday that commemorates the accession of the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990. It is celebrated annually on October 3.

The screenshot showing the poll results contains a watermark from the Telegram channel “Satellit”, which is run in German. This channel often produces its own graphic materials based on data from various research organizations. On October 4, the “Satellit” channel did indeed publish an infographic claiming that every third German is dissatisfied with the country’s reunification after the collapse of the “Eastern Bloc”. However, this graphic is not based on a survey by Forsa, but on data from another company, Infratest dimap.

According to the results, out of 1,306 respondents, 64% expressed a high or moderate level of satisfaction with reunification, while 31% said they were less satisfied or not satisfied at all. Importantly, respondents were not asked whether they wanted a return to the Soviet Union.

In addition, on October 2, “Satellit” published material about a similar survey by Forsa dedicated to the 35th anniversary of German reunification. In that poll, respondents were asked whether they believe that the populations of East and West Germany have already merged into a single nation. Of the 1,004 people surveyed, 35% said that East and West have largely become one nation, while 61% noted that factors of division still prevail.

Thus, this study also concerned an assessment of the degree of integration between East and West over the years, rather than support for reunification or any desire to return to the USSR. This is precisely the core of the manipulation spread by pro-Russian Telegram channels.