Update on Kalinigrad

[DrK]

In the fall of 1992 I, along with three colleagues, lived in Kalinigrad for three months. Our friends and contacts there have moved to St Petersburg and so I get very little news about what is happening in Kalinigrad. Can anyone share news or opinions about that part of Russia?

[kyrie]

They're well armed.

[DrK]

Good to hear from someone about Kalinigrad but I wonder on what you base your statement. I'm well aware that the city is very military--several military colleges there. I was acquainted with one of the "Commanders" at the naval college. Became friends with a retired Red Army major. The major attractions are remnants of WWII.
Have you been there recently?

[kyrie]

Hello Dr.

Sorry not to have gotten back with you sooner :-(

I myself have never been to Russia. I thought it interesting that President Putin moved nuclear weapons to that enclave. I initiated a thread about it, hoping to learn why they felt it needed and what impact it might have in world diplomacy. You'll find it in the current events section I think.

It's very nice to correspond with one who has been there. What are your thoughts on the area?

mir,
k

[DrK]

Kyrie,
Glad somebody is interested. Most Russians don't even know about Kaliningrad (Koenigsburg). It has one of the most fascinating and awful histories of any of the WWII border cities that Hitler and Stalin fought over. After Hitler laid seige to Stalingrad and Leningrad (St Petersburg), Stalin vowed to exact a toll of revenge on two German cities: one was Berlin and the other Koenigsburg (Kalinigrad). In the center of Kalinigrad there is a well-appointed war museum that graphically depicts the Russian campaign leading to the fall of Koenigsburg. After it fell, with the death of an estimated 1 million, it was leveled and rebuilt as the Russian westernmost military post and submarine base with an outlet into the Baltic sea.
It housed three military academies and a merchant marine college. It was populated with military personel and folk that the Soviets forcefully moved in. Koenigsburg had a population of about 1.5 mil. Kalinigrad is now less than 500,000.

I met a lady (70ish?) who was born in Minnesota during the depression. Her father took the family back to Russia hoping it would be the new utopia. He was sent to Siberia and his wife and children shipped to Kalinigrad. This lady had not spoken to an American since 1945.

Koenigsburg had been the capital of Prussia and therefore had many palaces and churches. All but a few have been destroyed. Inhabitants now use the few German buildings as landmarks--"Turn left after the German building," they will say. Immanuel Kant is buried in the never-rebuilt-ruins of a large Lutheran church.

I'm a musician (now retired) and performed in a "Youth Palace" (Russians call everything palaces) that was built over 30,000 graves. You could spot unmarked mass graves in the countryside because the soil had undulations. Locals, after you became friends, would take you to these spots and then tell you about their relatives that suddenly disappeared because "they were too clever."

It is a fascinating and depressing place but full of generous people. Maybe more stories later.

DrK

[ILay]

correction: Koenigsberg, not Koenigsburg

[kyrie]

Such tragic events; I hardly knew. Should do my homework, I suppose. Does anyone grieve for these 'undulations' or..?

So many dead. Atrocity begets atrocity it seems.


p.s. - zdrastvuytye Ilya

k.