‘Russia has Already Lost Ideological War in Kaliningrad to a Western Blitzkrieg,' Vypolzov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 2 – Vladimir Medinsky, the former culture minister who is now a senior aide to Vladimir Putin, says that Russians must understand that the West is carrying out “a conscious policy of brainwashing” within Russia, “something more dangerous than any military exercises beyond its borders.”

            According to him, this effort has been remarkably successful, and it is clear that outside powers want to take away from Russia the Kurile islands, Sakhalin, and Kaliningrad oblast. Andrey Vypolzov of Sovershenno Sekretno says the situation in Kaliningrad shows Moscow has already lost the ideological battle there (sovsekretno.ru/articles/mentalnyy-blitskrig-/).

            The ideological war against Russia has been going on in Kaliningrad for the last 30 years, the commentator says. It is “a partisan war,” but one in which those who should be fighting against it have been left “without bullets, without connections to the Big Land, and with only faith in Victory” and the hope that Moscow will send some help soon.

            The number of those in Kaliningrad who can be described as “collaborators” is growing and no one seems to be willing to block their actions. They were able to purge from the local university a pro-Moscow scholar (Vladimir Shulgin) who dared to suggest that the university should not bear the name of Immanuel Kant.

            The situation in the business sector is even worse, Vypolzov says. Almost every product now has a German name written in Latin script – including mineral water, beer, chocolate, special cakes and so on. No one has yet though to attach a German name to Russian bread but that is perhaps something that will come.

            Local officials encourage this, saying that the historic past of the city is thus being celebrated. But it is impossible to imagine the mayor of Poland’s Gdansk celebrating Danzig or a German city renaming itself Eisenhowerstadt because the US commander once worked there or a German city calling itself Stalinshtadt for the same reason.

            But what is even worse and suggests how far the rot has gone, Vypolzov continues, is that exhibitions even celebrate something called “the new Baltic ethnos,” a nation not Russian and not German but somewhere in between. Much of the pressure for these changes comes from those who want to make a profit from visitors.

            Unfortunately, the Sovershenno Sekretno journalist says, they are not alone. Many in Moscow either support what they are doing or refrain from doing anything to stop them. As a result, Western brainwashing is changing the mentality of Russians in Kaliningrad, with the result that Russia is losing them and may eventually lose their territory as well.