Kaliningrad Anniversary: The First Steps Of Georgy Boos  Cover Image

Kaliningrad Anniversary: The First Steps Of Georgy Boos
Kaliningrad Anniversary: The First Steps Of Georgy Boos

Author(s): Raimundas Lopata
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences
Published by: Foreign Policy Research Center

Summary/Abstract: The origin and originality of the problem often referred to as the Kaliningrad puzzle are geopolitical. Their concise description could be as follows. The part of Prussia taken by the Soviet Union after the Second World War was transformed into a gigantic Soviet military base. It performed the functions of the exclave against the West and of the barrier which helped the USSR to ensure the dependence of the Eastern Baltics and domination in Poland. After the Cold War, the territory of 15,100 square kilometres with a population of almost a million, owned by Russia and located the farthest to the West, although on the Baltic Sea, ashore became isolated from the motherland and turned into an exclave. Gradually that exclave found itself at the crossroads of different security structures and later – surrounded by one of them. Changes in the situation gave rise to the so-called Kaliningrad discourse, i.e. political decisions influenced by international policies in Central and Eastern Europe and academic discussion and studies of the role of this Russian-owned exclave in the relations of the East and the West.

  • Issue Year: 2005
  • Issue No: 15-16
  • Page Range: 123-147
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: English