A peculiar Baltic territory – the Kaliningrad Oblast (“oblast” refers to an administrative region in Russia) – sits isolated, detached from the Russian Federation proper, and separated from it by Lithuania to its northeast and Poland to its southwest, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). As such, it is an exclave, 5,800 mi2 (15,100 km2) in size, facing the Baltic Sea to its northwest. Lithuania and Poland share a border, 64 miles in length on the opposite side, that completes the enclosure of the Kaliningrad Oblast to the southeast, separating it from Belarus, an intimate ally of Russia. This Polish-Lithuanian border is otherwise defined by the problematic Suwalki Corridor which has been suggested as an “extra-territorial” route for goods and materiel trafficking with Russia.
What makes this particular border of interest is an outcome of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response to its violation of international law, the European Union (EU), to which Lithuania belongs, imposed sanctions that have caused Lithuania itself to close its borders to certain goods traded by Russia or to transport of materiel otherwise designated. With its standard self-righteous script of indignation, Russia has threatened Lithuania with retribution, yet to be formulated, apparently. There is more to this, however, as the Kaliningrad Oblast happens to be of strategic military importance for Russia. It provides the only ice-free winter port for Russia’s navy on the Baltic Sea; that is, until climate change exerts its influence on the matter.
A 2021 census identified a population of 1,029,966, a drop from 1,165,000 identified in a 1950 census which, at that time, was only half the number in the same territory when it was part of Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II (WWII). Its major city, Kaliningrad, formerly Königsberg, has shown a notable decline in growth rate from its peak in the 1960s, when it averaged 3.60%, to 0.41% in 2023. The sad story that underlies the tragedy of the Kaliningrad Oblast begins in the aftermath of WWII with the Potsdam Conference of July 1945, when Allied leaders ceded what was then Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia, and its adjacent territory to the administrative control of Soviet Russia.
The decision as to its final disposition of the territory was to be made pending expert assessment of the frontier and a subsequent determination by the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany which did not come about until September 1990. In the latter, a reunification of West and East Germany, was allowed with the exclusion of East Prussia among other east German territories. Germany’s border with Poland would remain as had already been agreed upon. Importantly, no language was given to affirming a right of annexation of what has now become the Kaliningrad Oblast to Russia. Likewise, the prior Act of Military Surrender referring to the unconditional surrender of all German forces to the Allies, signed in May 1945, assured that no occupied German territory would be automatically annexed by the victors.
Historically, several examples of such a precedent denying the right of annexation exist so that, under international law, there’s little to argue in support of Russia’s claim upon the territory it has “administered” exclusively for its own benefit. The Russians have remained rather silent on the issue and would now claim the right of protracted occupancy of the territory as a suitable response to any current objection. But then, how does an illegitimate claim at its origin justify a rightful claim at a later date? Moreover, how would this situation not be considered against a larger context of greater relevance having to do with precedent in the arena of international jurisprudence and the right of prior habitation? More on this later.
How was it that this all came about? The Russian advance upon Germany from the east in 1944 as WWII was taking its inevitable course. This resulted in its military occupation of Eastern Europe, including the territory of East Prussia, then part of Germany, with its capital, Königsberg. Joseph Stalin had already indicated his interest in the acquisition of the city and the territory surrounding it for its strategic value as a naval port with year-round access to the Baltic Sea. Interestingly, he stressed the need for revenge upon the nation that had perpetrated the war upon Russia. The invasion had caused a significant loss of life within Russia and, indeed, throughout a great swath of the western portion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Much of the latter can perhaps be attributed to Stalin’s own lack of defensive preparedness and the inept management by his military regarding the conduct of the war on the eastern front. Perhaps most egregious was his support for Nazi Germany at the outbreak of WWII, codified in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Nonaggression Pact of 1939, and followed by Russia’s own invasion of Poland and Romania from the east.
Once administrative control of Königsberg and the surrounding territory, termed at the time, “Lithuania Minor,” was handed to the Russians, Stalin lost little time in converting it into the Russian enclave he intended it to be. This actually began prior to the end of the war when, for no strategically justifiable reason, the Russians furthered the destruction of the city by land. Radek Sikorski, Poland’s past Minister of Foreign Affairs and current member of the European Parliament, best described the atrocity in its proper context, “seven centuries of history went up in smoke in one week of shelling . . .” and, “by then, the decision to annihilate East Prussia and grant Königsberg to the Soviet Union had already been taken.”
Several hundred thousand Germans and Lithuanians, those who had not fled the Russian onslaught, died subsequently from starvation, or deprivation and disease or were deported to Siberia where they met much the same end. Others were merely expelled to Germany. In total, over a million original inhabitants would come to be replaced subsequently by people transported from northern and central Russia beginning the process of Russification of the territory. This was, historically, a well-practiced pattern of domination of claimed territory within the Russian Empire of the 18th and 19th centuries and by Soviet Russia for much of the 20th century. Notable examples of such policies include the Russification of eastern Ukraine and, perhaps, in better comparison with its acuity, to the genocide of the Tatar population of Crimea.
The intentional subversion and outright elimination of regional culture, language and finally the territory’s heritage took on many forms. City, town, street, and institutional Germanic names, including place names, were changed into Russian versions. In this fashion, Königsberg became Kaliningrad, named after an old Bolshevik revolutionary, Mikhail Kalinin, who became Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union and who died conveniently in 1946 when a suitable namesake had to be chosen for what Russians felt to be their newly acquired territory. The destruction by previous Allied aerial bombing and subsequent Russian artillery of the city’s infrastructure during the last month of WWII was furthered by reconstruction efforts that now levelled much of what remained. The city’s colorful cityscape was replaced by Soviet-era gray concrete typical of the Russian emphasis at the time upon large, cavernous and domineering governmental buildings, extensive apartment complexes and industry.
A heavy military presence followed soon afterward with the arrival of a large naval establishment to take advantage of the deep seaport in Baltiysk. The Russians, more recently, deployed land-based Iskander short-range ballistic missile systems on the territory and a question now remains whether nuclear capability has been deployed. The creation of such a military presence in the Russian Federation’s most western reach has made the Kaliningrad Oblast a justifiable strategic target site in a European theater of action should Russia now threaten neighboring nations as it is apt to do in the present day.
Almost eight decades have passed since the conclusion of WWII and the assumption of “administrative” authority by the Soviet Union of present-day Kaliningrad Oblast but only 33 years from the time of the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in 1990. Continued administrative control of the territory by Russia has been assumed because it was acknowledged as the successor to the USSR following its collapse in 1991. The same argument has allowed Russia to retain a permanent seat within the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) giving it veto authority over issues of critical global importance, particularly as it applies to its own culpability for the present-day atrocities in Ukraine. The legal authority for this decision has been questioned but not entirely resolved leaving the UN in a moral quandary given Russia’s several violations of international law.
Likewise, there is no agreement regarding the duration of administrative control of a territory by a foreign authority as to its subsequent annexation by that authority. Britain’s administration of Cyprus after 35 years, for instance, ended when the Treaty of Lausanne established Cypriot sovereignty in 1923; the matter was subsequently confirmed by the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1937. Moreover, similar consideration has been given to the claim of a traditional population of a territory as in the case of the settlement of Gibraltar. Here, an earlier Spanish population was displaced by the British in 1704, given the territory’s strategic military advantage at the time. Despite a 1967 territorial plebiscite conducted by Britain showing a heavily favorable vote for continued British authority, the UN General Assembly strongly condemned the action and called for the transfer of sovereignty of Gibraltar back to Spain.
Raymond Smith, in his 1992 article regarding the status of the Kaliningrad Oblast, argued that a legitimate solution would be for Lithuania itself to assume the right of annexation of what has historically been referred as “Lithuania minor.” The territory is, after all, contiguous with Lithuania, and, more importantly, its population had been previously dominated by Lithuanians. By its prior agreement in the Final Settlement of 1990, Germany gave up legal title to the territory of the Kaliningrad Oblast and therefore, seemingly, has no further claim to it. It now remains for Lithuania to declare a previous assertion made in the November 1918 Declaration of Tilsit by the National Council of Prussian Lithuania that Lithuania itself assume its historically ethnographic borders and include Lithuania Minor within its domain. Much of the Lithuanian population has the right, even in its present-day generational form, to return to the territory from which it was forcibly deported, according to the Hague Convention of 1907 and the subsequent UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.
More recent analysis of the demographics of the city of Kaliningrad has shown that it has become less connected over time with Russia. The turning over of several generations within the Kaliningrad Oblast coupled with diminished migration from territories within Russia proper has resulted in a more homogenized society with less ties to engage it with its origins. An indigenous society has inevitably evolved so that by 1993, 97% of inhabitants had already been born in the territory. The monolithic creep of surrounding European culture and lifestyle has, over the decades, established itself also. It stands in marked contrast to the repressive society of Russia that had already established itself during the Soviet era but had now continued during Putin’s regime with its blatant propaganda, questionable judicial practices, repression of free speech and of journalistic expression.
The propaganda so familiar in present-day Russian society has much less capability of penetrating the mindset of the citizens of Kaliningrad and its surroundings. There are constant reminders of the comparatively better quality and diversity of food, lifestyle products, and entertainment available within those European nations along its immediate borders. Freedom of speech, artistic expression, and journalistic enterprise carry weight within society irrespective of the proclamations of an authoritarian government. Its conversion into a Russian military encampment and, consequently, its immediate targeting in a retaliatory strike by NATO against any Russian aggression is also unlikely to endear it to the motherland.
Russia’s illegitimate invasion of Ukraine in the past year, in violation of the UN Charter, has caused it to become a pariah within the international community. Sanctions will plague its economy for a long time hence and will consequently reflect upon the economic welfare of the Kaliningrad Oblast. News of Russian atrocities in Ukraine reported recently by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine to the UN Human Rights Commission, its military ineptitude, its declaration by the European Parliament as a terrorist state and Putin’s indictment as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court will likely further color the impression of Russia for Kaliningrad society, and perhaps cause it to reflect on its allegiance to such a state. There is, of course, the recent public embarrassment of Russia’s shameful attempt at declaring itself now a victim of “Russophobia” after it has given the world every reason to regard it with revulsion.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2023. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
