Kaliningrad – Far away and alone

Jukka Mallinen
Writer, translator and former chair of The Finnish PEN, Finnish Branch of World Association of Writers
Finland

The Iron Curtain of war has landed around Kaliningrad: “We dreamed that our region would be a bridge between Europe and Europeanizing Russia. Since 2014, this idea has flickered weaker and weaker – now it has been blown out,” says Mikhail, a poet from Kaliningrad. The Baltic Sea connects the enclave of Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania to St. Petersburg. Depending on the point of view, it is an island besieged by the Baltic States or threating Europe. It has the potential to both trigger and tighten tension.

This historically rich area was conquered by the German Order in the 13th century. The capital of East Prussia, Königsberg, was known for philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt, and writers such as E. T. A. Hofmann and Anna Seghers. After World War II, the Germans were deported and the Russians replaced them, renaming the area Kaliningrad.

Today, Kaliningrad city center is a puzzle of a few German bourgeois villas, Soviet-era gray barracks and neo-Russian glass palaces. The confusion of architecture reflects the contradictions and unresolved tensions of its identity. At the same time, it reminds us that Kaliningrad could be a new European-Russian synthesis. Russia’s central government has long been drumming propaganda about a hostile, threatening and decadent West. In the Kaliningrad region, however, it do not go through among the educated active population. The
lies do not work because residents have a lot of positive experiences from Poland and Lithuania.

Few have been visited as they say here in “Russia” or “the mainland”. Poland and Lithuania are visited for buying fashion products and banned food several times a year. Assertions on russophobia in the EU do not work. Poland and Lithuania are examples worth following here.

A strong local identity is reflected even in the fact that car traffic is more civilized and disciplined than in the East. This is to make the difference to the barbarians of the East.

The symptomatic controversy over the name of the city reflects different views on the direction of development in Kaliningrad. In 2002, a group demanded the renaming of city to Königsberg because the fate of the region is inseparable from the achievements of European and world history. The argument was “the will to restore the historical name and get rid of the name of Stalin’s accomplice”. At the same time, reference was made to the corresponding restorations of the names of St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg in “Greater Russia”. However, the Regional Duma proposed criminalizing the change of name Kaliningrad.

In 2009, the Mayor of Kaliningrad, Feliks Lapin, also proposed restoring the Königsberg name as it would strengthen cooperation. Chairman of the Council of Veterans of War, Labor and Law Enforcement Boris Kosenkov called the proposal “a defamatory to those who shed blood here during the war and then rebuilt it”.

The author Günter Grass offered the disputing parties European reconciliation: “For a united Europe, this has long and forever been part of Russia, which is gradually, though difficulties rehabilitating and developing this wonderful region without forgetting its history.”

The East Prussian past is reflected in the large number of German visitors. They are offered East Prussian souvenirs and excursions in the name of nostalgia tourism.

The old generation in the area is largely veterans of the army, navy, militia and KGB, and opinions are in line with that. For them, the Kaliningrad region is a Russian aircraft carrier and a protruding base.

The Kremlin thinks so too. It is concerned about the connections of Kaliningrad to the west and focuses on fortification, preparation, defense connections to St. Petersburg.

In Kaliningrad is in Baltijsk the main base of the Baltic Fleet with Iskander missiles. The armament has radiated to the entire Baltic Sea region, including Finland.

The area can be used to escalate tensions: Lithuania sees transports to Kaliningrad as a possible source of provocation. Troops and equipment travel along the Baltic Sea, but other maintenance by train. Here is an opportunity to create unrest. During the shooting exercises at sea, the Russian navy has already twice crossed the border of Lithuanian territorial waters.

There was a lot of citizen activity before. There were huge protests against Governor Booze, commanded here by the Kremlin. Civic activism and the independent media have now been destroyed.

All in all, the geographical extreme points of Russia, the Kaliningrad and Vladivostok oblasts, have been considered the weakest held regions in the Russian Federation.

Until 2016, Kaliningrad was a special economic zone that stimulated the economy and joint ventures, which developed production and e.g. assembly of foreign cars. The Kremlin stopped it discreditionally and shifted focus to the tax benefits for large state-owned companies. The area was left in the custom block and economic growth stopped. Our area is irrelevant to the Kremlin, the people say, or needed only militarily.

Now the Iron Curtain has landed over Kaliningrad with all its economic implications. There is a flight connection along the Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg, a train connection to Moscow is left, but the Russians are not allowed to get on or off the train in Vilnius. Area is in a situation that makes it difficult to supply food and spare parts. The region is being severely penalized more severely than the rest of Russia by the economic collapse, inflation, rising prices, unemployment and impoverishment. Some people say, that Russia is predicted to be almost like Iran or North Korea.

But if the democratic experiment of the 1990s failed in Russia, the authoritarian experiment of Putin’s period has also failed.

When will the darkness give up? From the bottom of the deep pit, a new beginning can start, an experiment by democrats that could succeed. Königsberg-Kaliningrad will rise if Russia opens up to Europe. The Western influence will then be here faster and deeper than anywhere in Russia.

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