Question by : Why didn’t the German’s try to reintegrate Kaliningrad/Königsberg during the fall of the USSR?
Why didn’t the German’s try to reintegrate Kaliningrad/Königsberg during the fall of the USSR when the Soviets might have allowed to such an exchange to take place or simply been to weak to prevent it from happening.
The Soviets had already lost grasp of East Germany, and the Baltic states, why didn’t Kaliningrad share the same fate?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Ronaldo Fenomeno
Because it was part of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (aka Russian part of USSR), so it has nothing to do with the fall of USSR. Kaliningrad is just a province of Russia, so it couldn’t get sovereignty when USSR fell. In other words provinces couldn’t get sovereignty only republics could. So only way to join Germany would be through referendum, which would fail since Kaliningrad has all Russian population. And believe me, it wouldn’t have been nice thing to see, as we know what happened to one Russian province that tried to separate from Russia. Just google Chechnya.
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Spellbound says
The Soviet Union fragmented along republican lines – Russia did not lose any territory.
And East Germany was independent, not part of the USSR, or Russia.
It was not taken by Germany for four very different reasons:
1) War: Russia was, and is, a nuclear power, with a huge army and any attempts to seize Russian territory would not have been taken slitting down.
2) Agreements: When Germany reunified the government sought to calm Polish fears of a resurgent Germany by agreeing that Germany would respect the post war boundaries.
3) International organisations: Germany, as a member of the EU and NATO is not allowed to have irridentist claims on other countries.
4) Democracy and demographics: The population of Kaliningrad is Russian, not German. Had it been given to Germany then there would have to have been a massive population transfer of Russians out of the city and Germans in. The citizens of Kaliningrad would never have voted for this.
otto saxo says
Königsberg does not exist anymore, the Germans who founded and built it have been killed or expelled. Who would like to settle down so far away on such an unsecure place to start an existence out of nothing and maybe for nothing? The scenery is still decorated with lots of rotten German manors and farms. It’s a complete turn-off.
Kaliningrad itself looks like a nightmare. If anyone else than the Russians should ever own it in the future, give it to the Lithuanians. They will know how to love and honor it. Until then, it seems to be the destiny of that piece of land to be a sad isolated island.