KALININGRAD (Russia): The proud Baltic city of Kaliningrad marks its 750th anniversary this weekend in a celebration that also stresses its comparatively recent history as a Russian enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.
With the Soviet victory in 1945, seven centuries of Germanic history in the city state once known as Koenigsberg came to an end, its German-speaking population was driven out and a Russian population — now numbering about one million — moved in.
“The 750th anniversary is a festival to say that this land is Russian,” said Alexei Ivanov, who took part in an anniversary parade with some of his colleagues from a local brewery carrying banners vaunting beers with the German-sounding names of Ostmark and Bittburgen.
At 27, Ivanov is one of the third generation of Russians who arrived in Kaliningrad after it was ceded to the Soviet Union by the Potsdam Treaty of 1945.
Once the proud capital of eastern Prussia and the seat of the Teutonic knights who founded it in 1255, Kaliningrad is now a Russian city like any other, with drab Soviet-era apartment blocs and Russian pop culture in the stores, Only the cathedral and a few Hanseatic houses recall the past.
“Who cares if it is called Koenigsberg or Kaliningrad, it’s part of Russia,” said Lenart Lekhkar, who moved to the city from Uzbekistan three years ago, and was waving a small red, white and blue Russian flag as the parade went by.
“Anyway, the Germans are not going to come back,” said Anna Belakovaya, who came to Kaliningrad in the 1950s from Nizhny Novgorod in the Volga region. “We didn’t take Berlin from them, did we?”
The city, the birthplace of the philosopher Emmanuel Kant, was once an important centre of German culture, but now has only a single small German newspaper, the Koenigsberger Express, whose founder and only staff member, Elena Lebedeva, said most copies were sent to nostalgic readers in Germany by subscription.
In the parade were a group of children carrying flags of the pro-Kremlin Russia United party, closely followed by a military band from the interior ministry.—AFP
