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Kant's Future: Debates about the Identity of Kaliningrad Oblast

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2019

Miłosz J. Zieliński
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Abstract

This article addresses the role that the legacy of the pre- and post-WWII past has played in ongoing identity debates among the inhabitants of Kaliningrad oblast of the Russian Federation. Since 1991, interest in preserving this legacy has been on the rise, influencing the inhabitants’ feeling of regional distinctiveness in numerous ways. While the pre-war legacy is important for a considerable number of Kaliningraders, others believe that it threatens the Russian and Soviet mien of the Oblast, both in cultural and political terms. They favor taking greater care of Soviet-era buildings, monuments, and other commemorations of war heroes. This viewpoint disparity has recently widened due to both internal and external factors, including the deterioration of Russo-western relations. A March 2015 incident in the village of Veselovka is used to reflect upon the way in which pre-war and post-war legacies are used in the above-mentioned identity debate. The author examines the direction of identity construction in the oblast through the officially-acknowledged vision of Russianness as pursued by President Vladimir Putin, in particular, and the Russian government, in general.

Type
Managing Regional Diversity
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , Winter 2018 , pp. 937 - 956
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2019 

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Footnotes

This article is a part of the research project entitled “Identity of the inhabitants of the Kaliningrad Oblast since 1991 to present day: constitutive factors and direction of ongoing changes.” The project has been financed by the National Science Centre (project number: 2014/13/N/HS6/04214) within the framework of the PRELUDIUM program, as well as a part of author's PhD research on the same subject. Both projects were concluded in 2017. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent any institution which he is affiliated with.

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53. Foreign diplomat, interview, Kaliningrad, November 2015.

54. No major political forces from Germany, Lithuania, or Poland took part in this debate. They were of the opinion that any territorial changes in Europe need to be made with respect to international law and should not be subject to political science-fiction. Additionally, they treated the question of the future status of Kaliningrad oblast as a very delicate one, as there were still Soviet/Russian troops stationed all across central Europe. The last Russian soldier left Poland only in September 1993 (Russian technical personnel stayed until 1994).

55. It is not a coincidence that people of such origin constituted more than 90% of the post-war population of Kaliningrad oblast. They were perceived as ethnically Russian. Even though the Soviet Union declared itself as a multinational, ethnically-diverse state, many of its politicians and intellectuals demonstrated a Great Russian approach that had its roots in tsarist Russia. According to this view, Belarussians and Ukrainians were not considered as separate nations, but just a branch of the Great Russian nation. This phenomenon was described by Mykola Riabchuk, for example, in the online article Postkolonial΄nii Sindrom (Postcolonial Syndrome), available at https://day.kyiv.ua/uk/article/podrobici/postkolonialniy-sindrom (last accessed November 9, 2018).

56. Rasporiazhenie Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 1 avgusta 2016 goda no 229-rp, at http://kremlin.ru/acts/bank/41173 (last accessed September 20, 2018).