Kaliningrad ‘Seeking to Play Role Baltic Republics Did in Soviet Times,’ Kotsyubinsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 20 – Today, Daniil Kotsyubinsky says, the Russian Federation exclave of Kaliningrad is “seeking to play the same role the Baltic republics did during Soviet times,” offering itself as ‘a piece of authentic Europe’ forcibly cut off from the West, with all the tourist benefits that entails.”

            In the 1990s, there was much talk that Kaliningrad might become “the fourth Baltic republic,” not only because it was then part of a Euroregion but because Russians who visited it would be affected and bring some of its values home, possibly transforming more of their country just as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania did the USSR earlier.

            That possibility was very much on Putin’s mind, and from the start of his rule, he worked consistently to reduce Kaliningrad from that “window on the West” to a militarized outpost of the Muscovite empire lest it threaten his power and the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/08/moscow-has-transformed-kaliningrad-from.html).

            But the people of Kaliningrad have not completely lost the spirit they had in the 1990s (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/09/kaliningrad-on-its-way-to-becoming.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/09/kaliningrad-is-why-moscow-must-control.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/an-independent-konigsberg-will-be.html).

            And according to Kotsyubinsky, a historian who focuses on Russian cities and their impact, it is now recovering in an interesting way, no longer being so compelled to downplay its German origins – Kaliningrad was Koenigsburg until 1945 – but instead using them to build up tourism and spread its influence among Russians from elsewhere (gorod-812.ru/kant-nash/).

            He describes how important Kant and the German past is for those who live in Kaliningrad not only as advertisements but as sources for the development of their own distinctive and separate identity. If Kotsyubinsky is right, then it is quite possible that that region has resumed its march toward becoming the fourth Baltic republic despite all Putin has done.