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'Kaliningrad Oblast' (, ''Kaliningradskaya Oblast''; informally called ''Yantarny kray'' (Янта́рный край, meaning ''amber region'') is a federal subject (an oblast) of Russia on the Baltic coast.
Despite being the westernmost part of the Russian Federation, it has no land connection to the rest of Russia, as it is an exclave of Russia surrounded by Lithuania and Poland. Borderless travel to the main part of Russia is only possible by sea or air. The fact that Lithuania and Poland are both members of the European Union and NATO means that the oblast is surrounded by the territories of these organizations as well.
Its largest city and the administrative center is Kaliningrad (formerly known as Königsberg), which has historical significance as both a major city of Prussia and the capital of the former German province East Prussia, of which the region remains the northern core remnant. Population: 968,200 (2004 est.); 955,281 (2002 Census); 871,283 (1989 Census).

Contents

Geography

Politics

History

East Prussia

Kaliningrad Oblast

Time zone

Administrative divisions

Demographics

References

External links

Geography

Kaliningrad Oblast is a non-contiguous exclave of Russia surrounded by Lithuania, Poland, and the Baltic Sea.
Geographical features include:

★ Curonian Lagoon - shared with Lithuania

★ Vistula Lagoon - shared with Poland

Politics

The current governor (since 2005) of Kaliningrad Oblast is Georgy Boos, who succeeded Vladimir Yegorov.
The EU and Russia have had serious political debate over Kaliningrad. The recent enlargement of the EU (2004) saw Poland and Lithuania become member states meaning Kaliningrad now has land borders only with the EU. Issues of security have been at the forefront of debate, with high relevance to the Schengen Agreement.

History

East Prussia

The region of Kaliningrad Oblast was inhabited during the Middle Ages by tribes of Old Prussians in the western part and Lithuanians in the right side from Pregolya and Alna rivers. The Teutonic Knights conquered the region and established a monastic state. Atop a destroyed Prussian settlement known as Tvanksta, the Order founded the major city Königsberg, the current Kaliningrad. Germans and Poles resettled the territory and assimilated the indigenous Old Prussians. The Lithuanian-inhabited areas became known as Lithuania Minor. In 1525 Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg secularised the Prussian branch of the Teutonic Order and established himself as the sovereign of the Duchy of Prussia, later inherited by the Margravate of Brandenburg. The region was reorganized into the Province of East Prussia within the Kingdom of Prussia in 1773.


East Prussia was an important centre of German culture. Many important figures, such as Immanuel Kant, originated from this region. The cities of Kaliningrad Oblast, despite being heavily damaged during World War II and after, still bear typical German architecture, such as Jugendstil, showing the rich German history and cultural importance of the area. The Lithuanian-speaking population in East Prussia diminished due to Germanization; in the early 20th century Lithuanians made up a majority only in the far northeast of East Prussia, the rest of the area being predominantly German-speaking.
The Memel Territory (Klaipėda region), formerly part of northeastern East Prussia, came under Lithuanian control in 1923 after World War I. After coming to power in Weimar Germany, the Nazis radically altered about a third of the place names of this area by Germanizing most names of Old Prussian or Lithuanian origin in 1938.

Kaliningrad Oblast

During World War II the Soviet Red Army entered the eastern-most tip of East Prussia on August 29 1944. Rumours of massacres committed by the Soviet troops spread panic in the province and caused a mass flight westward. More than two million people were evacuated, many of them via the Baltic Sea. The remaining population was deported after the war ended and the area was repopulated primarily by Russians and, to a lesser extent, by Ukrainians and Belarusians (see "Demographics", below).
The Potsdam Agreement of world powers assigned northern East Prussia to the Soviet Union pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement:

'VI. CITY OF KOENIGSBERG AND THE ADJACENT AREA'

The Conference examined a proposal by the Soviet Government that pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement the section of the western frontier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which is adjacent to the Baltic Sea should pass from a point on the eastern shore of the Bay of Danzig to the east, north of Braunsberg and Goldap, to the meeting point of the frontiers of Lithuania, the Polish Republic and East Prussia.

The Conference has agreed in principle to the proposal of the Soviet Government concerning the ultimate transfer to the Soviet Union of the city of Koenigsberg and the area adjacent to it as described above, subject to expert examination of the actual frontier.

The President of the United States and the British Prime Minister have declared that they will support the proposal of the Conference at the forthcoming peace settlement. [1]

In 1957, an agreement was signed and later came into force which delimited the boundary between Poland and the Soviet Union. (Full text: [2], for other issues of the frontier delimitation see [3])
According to some documents written during the administration of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet government had planned to make the rest of the area a part of the Lithuanian SSR. The area was administered by the planning committee of the LSSR, although the area had its own Party committee. However, the leadership of the Lithuanian SSR (especially Antanas Sniečkus) refused to take the territory mainly because of its devastation during the war. Instead the region was added to the Russian SFSR and since 1946 it has been known as Kaliningrad Oblast. According to some historians, Joseph Stalin created it as an oblast separate from the LSSR because it further enclosed the Baltic republics from the West.[4] Names of the towns, cities, rivers, and other geographical objects were changed into newly-created Russian ones.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the independence of the Baltic states physically isolated Kaliningrad Oblast from the rest of Russia. Some ethnic Germans began to migrate to the area, especially Volga Germans from other parts of Russia and Kazakhstan, especially after Germany stopped granting free right of return to ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union. The economic situation has been badly affected by this isolation (and the large reduction in the size of the Russian military garrison which was previously one of the major employers), especially when neighbouring nations imposed strict border controls when they joined the European Union. Proposals for visa-free travel between the EU and Kaliningrad have so far been rejected.
In recent times, the situation has slowly changed as the people of Kaliningrad have begun to reexamine their past. Germany and Lithuania have renewed contact with Kaliningrad Oblast through town twinning and other projects. This has helped to promote interest in the history and the culture of the East Prussian and Lietuvinink communities.

Time zone

Kaliningrad Oblast is located in the Eastern European Time Zone (known locally as the Kaliningrad Time Zone or the Russia Zone 1). UTC offset is +0200 (USZ1)/+0300 (USZ1S).

Administrative divisions

Demographics

''Population'': According to the 2002 Census the population of the region was 955,281 (78% urban; 22% rural). Kaliningrad Oblast is the fourth most densely populated in the Russian Federation, with 62.5 persons per sq.km. Almost none of the pre-World War II Lithuanian population (Lietuvininks) or German population remain in Kaliningrad Oblast.
''Ethnic groups'': According to the 2002 Census the 'national composition' included

★ 786,885 Russians (82.37%)

★ 50,748 Belarusians (5.31%)

★ 47,229 Ukrainians (4.94%)

★ 13,937 Lithuanians (1.46%)

★ 8,415 Armenians (0.88%)

★ 8,340 Germans (0.87%)

★ 4,729 Tatars (0.50%)

★ 3,918 Poles (0.41%)

★ 2,959 Azeris (0.30%)

★ 2,320 Mordvins (0.24%)

★ 2,027 Chuvash (0.21%)

★ 1,599 Jews (0.17%)

★ 1,447 Roma (0.15%)

★ 1,116 Moldovans (0.12%)

★ 738 Chechens (0.08%)

★ 709 Latvians (0.07%)

★ 681 Georgians (0.07%)

★ 631 Kazakhs and 631 Uzbeks (0.07% each)

★ 562 Bashkirs (0.06%)

★ 504 Yezidi (0.05%)

★ 448 Mari (0.05%)

★ 433 Ossetians (0.05%)

★ 382 Udmurts (0.04%)

★ 359 Lezgins (0.04%)

★ 346 Bulgarians (0.04%)

★ and 309 Tajiks (0.03%)
as well as other groups of less than three hundred persons each. An additional 0.93% of residents declined to state their nationality or ethnocultural identity on the census questionnaire.^[1]

References

History section:
#Simon Grunau, Preußische Chronik. Hrsg. von M. Perlbach etc., Leipzig, 1875.
#A. Bezzenberger, Geographie von Preußen, Gotha, 1959

External links

★ Online guide to Kaliningrad - Kaliningradcity.ru

★ Official site

★ Kaliningrad Oblast on Google Maps

★ Photos of Kaliningrad

★ Recent photos taken by Joost Lemmens of the Netherlands shows examples of small towns neglected under the Soviet Union around Kaliningrad Oblast. This site gives the Prussian German town names and the corresponding Russian names after 1945/49. It starts out with the gate of the horse breeding stables in Trakehnen, and hopeful signs of new beginnings for this devastated land.

★ Master's thesis by Sergey Naumkin on the possibility of Kaliningrad integrating with the EU as a special economic zone

★ ''Life in Kaliningrad Oblast''

★ ''Spuren der Vergangenheit / Следы Пρошлого'' (Traces of the past) This site by W.A. Milowskij, a Kaliningrad resident, contains hundreds of interesting photos, often with text explanations, of architectural and infrastructural artifacts of the territory's long German past.

★ Euroregion Baltic