Paul Goble
Staunton, April 7 – On the 80th anniversary of the annexation of East Prussia by the USSR in April 1946, a German region that had been under Soviet control since German forces were driven out in April 1945, numerous articles have appeared about the complicated history of how this absorption took place.
Among them is one by journalist Andrey Dmitriyev who makes a variety of points, all of which have echoes to this day (apn-spb.ru/publications/article39655.htm). He talks about how the German population was displaced by Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians over time and in particular about how Belarusian communists wanted it to pass to them.
Had that happened, Dmitriyev says, the geopolitics of the region now would be completely different. Belarus would have had ports on the Baltic, there would be no talk about a Suwalki corridor and Russia would have lost much of its leverage over the Baltic republics and Eastern Europe more generally.
Dmitriyev says that stories about Belarusian interest in gaining control over the former German territory are “fakes” even though current Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has often talked about how much better it would have been if his country had its own port, something that the annexation of Kaliningrad would have made or would make possible.
The reason the contemporary writer is so sure that stories about Belarusian interest in gaining control of Kaliningrad are not true is that Stalin made it very clear not only at international conferences but in Politburo meetings that he wanted this German region to become part of Russia.
That argument certainly fits in with Putin’s current effort to boost the former Soviet dictator and talk about “the genocide of the Soviet people.” But it is uncertain even at the end of his rule that Stalin was as obsessed with boosting Russia at the expense of the USSR; and it is far more likely that he wanted Moscow to control Kaliningrad directly by being part of the RSFSR.
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