Kaliningrad Behind the Wall Is It a Guarantee of Good Neighborhood

The actions of Russians living in the Kaliningrad region are difficult to understand and predict This uncomfortable neighborhood raises a question for all of Europe: what is Russia? And how dangerous can it be? Such a neighbor one day offers to drink together, and the next day grabs the axe.

But maybe someday everything will change? Two neighbors - the heroes of Robert Frost's 1914 poem Repairing the Wall - after the winter start repairing a stone wall that has been damaged by frost, animals and fox hunters with dogs, as well as a wooden fence separating the pastures: I let the neighbor know who lives behind a hill, To mark our lands with it, And again we raise a wall between us And the wall stays between us when we walk together.

regular crutches To hold them together, magic must be used: "Until I leave here, stay where I put you!" Our fingers are raking from carrying boulders And it follows that the wall is completely unnecessary where it stands now: It is all pine, and I am an apple orchard, My apple trees - I say - will not cross the wall And will not eat the cones from under its pine trunks.

neighborhood " [translated by Leszek Elektorowicz] Where there are solid fences, there are also good neighbors.

As the experience of recent years has shown, solid fences and their proper protection have become an inseparable element of national security policy In the summer of 2021, when a large number of migrants arrived in Lithuania, it seemed that Lithuania discovered a national idea - the construction of a great defensive wall, to separate it from neighboring Belarus - an idea that, at least for a short time, united both politicians and the society they represented.

Just like 30 years ago, the borders of some of the neighboring countries of Eastern Europe are now marked by the barrels of tanks Some Lithuanian politicians have recently even started talking about the Mannerheim Line war structures on our border, as if we were living in the early 20th century, when it was still possible to stop artillery fire with stone fortifications.

A Year of Miracles When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, physical barriers between neighbors began to rapidly disappear across Central and Eastern Europe It was a year of miracles, annus mirabilis.

The Iron Curtain from the Baltic Sea to Trieste, which separated the neighboring nations from the end of World War II, it began to crumble At that time, it seemed that with the disappearance of the German Democratic Republic from the map of Europe, the last serious problem also disappeared.

The barbed wire barrier on the Polish-Lithuanian border was dismantled, and on the Polish-Belarusian border, left to its own devices, rusted and deteriorated During the post-communist economic crisis, neighbors went to their neighbors, mainly to stock up on necessities and do their mundane business.

With the collapse of the Soviet economy, tens of thousands of people lost their livelihoods, and for weeks on the Polish-Lithuanian border there were coaches full of "tourists" with cigarettes and all kinds of goods for sale The previously closed military zone of Kaliningrad has opened, allowing Lithuanians and Poles to enter without visas.

German "nostalgic tourists" equipped with marks, eager to explore the areas of former East Prussia, also appeared Around 2000, along with the improvement of the economic situation, there was also an increase in non-commercial tourist trips to our neighbors - to the Polish Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodship, to see Teutonic castles and relax in spa complexes, or to visit the former Lithuanian lands belonging to the Kaliningrad Oblast (the so-called Little Lithuania), and of course, by the way, fill up with cheaper petrol or buy cheaper cigarettes.

While the mental differences between the neighboring nations remained, the ideological and cultural barriers melted away For all its ups and downs, European history is one of continuity.

The physical and cultural borders of Europe, which may or may not coincide, constantly changing, so that neither in the past nor today there was and still is not a fully united Europe "Border" is a complex concept.

It refers to the spatial connection of the territory of the state with the neighboring territory At the same time, it refers to contact with him (frontier).

In this sense, the concept of a border would mean a border territory within which one can actively act and which can be influenced in various ways Where did these physical and cultural borders between neighbors in the region we live go? Which of our neighbors are or were in the east and which in the west? Before World War II, Germany was undoubtedly a part of the West economically and mentally, while today the Kaliningrad Oblast, which is located further west than Lithuania, remains in the eastern civilization space.

Disappearing neighborhood Starting from the 16th century, the development of capitalism in Western Europe led to the imposition of domination of this part of Europe (the "centre" according to the American sociologist and historian Immanuel Wallerstein) over the "periphery" in Eastern Europe, where the "second serfdom" was created, and the main economic function was export and re-export of grain and raw materials to Western European countries In 1788, the American John Ledyard, returning from Russia, did not feel that he had entered Europe until he reached the Prussian border, which he described as "the great barrier between Asian and European customs".

In the opinion of Western European dignitaries, beyond the Prussian border there was a territory with a different culture, and a small stream flowing through Wierzbołowo, which in the 20th century separated Lithuania from Germany, became the border between two worlds In the conclusions of the Special Commission for Klaipėda Region of the Ambassador Conference of 1923, we find the assessment that “the eastern border of Klaipėda Region, which was the Russian-German border, in fact indicates suddenly, without any transitional nuances, the border between two different civilizations.

At least a century separates one from the other It is the real frontier between the West and the East, between Europe and Asia.

In the 1930s, the German nationalist ideology began to use the claim that "Klaipeda's eastern border is the border between Asia and Europe" for propaganda purposes In November 1931, a court trial of Katrė Vaitelaitė from Kretingi County, who was accused of murdering her newborn, was held in Klaipėda.

The lawyer Hans Borchert used as an argument to mitigate her guilt the statement that that "the accused comes from the former Russian partition" [to which - in contrast to Klaipeda Land - in 1918 the neighboring district of Kretingi belonged - note crowd ].

So she came from a country that, although according to the map, belongs to Europe, is in fact part of Asia, and where Asian customs prevail And there, human life has almost no value.

It sounds politically incorrect, but today the question of how much the lives of our neighbors, whose brutal experiences we are currently witnessing in Ukraine, are worth, is not just a rhetorical question The view on our relations with our neighbors is rapidly changing, not only political or cultural, but also everyday.

Not so long ago, discussions in the corridors of Brussels were about visa-free travel between Lithuania and Russia (or at least between Lithuania and the neighboring Kaliningrad region), and the idea of ​​a single European Economic Area from Lisbon to Vladivostok did not seem all that fantastic The European Union has created and generously funded various cooperation programs involving border municipalities in Lithuania, Poland, Kaliningrad and Belarus.

On both sides of the border, tourist trails and information centres, marinas and scenic spots were created But the war in Ukraine started and the concept of neighborhood changed so radically that it is hard to even imagine.

The term "strategic partnership" has acquired a very clear military-geopolitical connotation, and the very concept of "neighborhood" has disappeared from political and cultural discourse History shows that it is an inappropriate term for relations between states and nations.

Constant conflicts and wars are more characteristic of historical development than periods of peace Visions of a Europe without borders, based on neighborhood and cooperation, never lasted long.

Russia's aggression against Ukraine has brought us back to a Hobbesian reality in which Machtpolitik - power politics reigns supreme, and we are looking at some of our neighbors across the border with a machine gun sight or at least night vision goggles Today, as the Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili said many years ago, "the problem facing Russia can still be called a European problem, and the problem is: civilization or barbarism - which will prevail?" Centuries of mutual relations Today it is quite strange to realize that before World War II our neighbors were Germans, while the Russians were somewhere far to the east, in the imagination of many people somewhere near the Urals or Moscow.

For several centuries, the Lithuanians living on the Nemunas maintained neighborly relations with the Germans At the beginning of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century, the border between Prussia and Greater Lithuania was the most extensive area of ​​their mutual contacts.

Until the Soviet occupation in 1940, the Lithuanian-German border was 245 kilometers long, and trains ran daily between Lithuania and Germany (Kłajpeda–Tilża and Kaunas–Berlin, via Wierzbołów and Eitkūnai) The Lithuanian lawyer Mykolas Römeris [in Polish historiography known as Michał Römer – ed.

trans ] regularly went to Königsberg for healing treatments.

In the evening he boarded the train in Kaunas, in the morning he was already there There were regular air connections between Klaipeda and Königsberg - a small, nine-seater plane flew on this route.

Evening newspapers from Berlin arrived in Kaunas the very next morning Mail contacts were incredibly fast.

In 1921, a letter sent by the German linguist Reinhold Trautmann from Königsberg reached the Lithuanian linguist Kazimieras Būga after only two days I wonder when a letter sent from Nida to Zelenogradsk or Kaliningrad, or vice versa, would reach the addressee today? In independent Lithuania, especially in the first decade of the 20th century, the German language, whose area of ​​use was further strengthened in Lithuania as a result of World War I, was the link between Lithuanian intellectuals and Western Europe.

It was the main language of science in Lithuania at that time Lithuanian scientists wrote their dissertations in German, studied at German-language universities (often in Fribourg, Switzerland, where it was quite easy to obtain a diploma after the war), did internships at German universities and completed various training and qualification courses there.

Some of the articles in Athenaeum, a journal of the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy of Kaunas University, were written in German, and German authors were among the most frequently cited in Lithuanian scholarly literature Although after Hitler came to power, tensions related to the Klaipeda region appeared in mutual relations, the German language remained the lingua franca not only in Lithuania, but also in the entire Ostsee region until the end of World War II.

In the area of ​​Little Lithuania (Klaipėda Region) Germans and Lithuanians lived side by side for several centuries and accumulated a wide range of experience in everyday neighborly relations When in 1923 Klaipeda was annexed to Lithuania, its immediate periphery moved to the border on the Nemunas River.

The entire Klaipėda Region, covering only 2,657 square kilometers and inhabited by roughly equal numbers of Lithuanian and German speakers, was a kind of border state Little Lithuania The ratio of both Germans and Lithuanians living in Little Lithuania [the so-called Lietuvininków – editor's note transl.

] to its neighbors - Lithuanians from neighboring Samogitia and Greater Lithuania, "Russian Lithuania" can be described as looking down on people with a lower culture In Little Lithuania, homesteads and roads were planted with trees that formed long avenues, all the fields were tended and cultivated, the roads by the estates and villages kept in good condition, regularly repaired, and along these roads ran the signs of civilization: telephone and telegraph lines.

Every few miles there were colonial shops, post offices, red-brick school buildings On the Samogitian side, the farms were poor, the buildings often had leaky roofs, and the fields were often barren.

The differences between the farms of Little Lithuania and Samogitia were more or less the same as today between Lithuania and Kaliningrad Oblast In Little Lithuania itself, neighborly relations between native Lithuanians and Germans developed naturally.

The local Lithuanians spoke a mixture of German and Lithuanian, and the German language, as well as German cultural values, were close to them The attitude of the Germans towards the local Lithuanians, especially from rural regions, well expressed in numerous literary works, was generally good-naturedly paternalistic.

The writer Hermann Sudermann, who comes from this region, described the local Lithuanians in his works as a rural people living in poverty and misery, having their simple joys and troubles Ansas Balčius, the protagonist of the story Journey to Tilsit (1917), "is almost a master, he speaks German to the Germans like a real German, drinking grog, sweetens it like a real German.

" The "real gentleman" in Sudermann's story, in the eyes of the Lithuanian, is associated with a German, that is, with a figure of higher social and cultural standing Indrė, a Lithuanian woman, really wants to go to a military concert in the city park in Tylża, but “she has doubts whether Lithuanians – especially those dressed in peasant clothes – can take part in such entertainment, which is clearly intended for the Germans.

In 1898, Albert Zweck's book on the ethnography and geography of Lithuania Minor, Litauen, was published Eine Landes- und Volkskunde, in which the Prussian Lithuanians were presented as solidly built and capable of hard work, speaking in a devious and cunning manner, prone to deceit, alcohol and "carnal desires", but nevertheless as "likable and able to show respect" and "not giving the impression - like Poles - slavishly submissive".

The book ended with a civilizational summary that, unlike the Germans, the Prussian Lithuanians "live happily, enjoying the beauty of nature" and do not feel the need to "climb some misty heights" In 1925, the Lithuanian-German Small Border Treaty was signed, which provided special privileges for the inhabitants of the borderland.

The agreement allowed local Lithuanian farmers to import a certain amount of agricultural products from the Klaipėda Region to the German borderland, while the inhabitants of East Prussia could import a certain amount of agricultural products from the Klaipeda Region without customs duties and taxes (except for sausages) The pre-war trade on the border is worth quoting Alfonsas Nevardauskas, a former officer of the Lithuanian border guard: “The butchers, after placing their butchers in rows by the river and covering them with white tablecloths, loaded them with the delicacies they had brought and, having heated up the sausage cauldron, waited for customers to come.

The butchers were followed by the bakers […] The inhabitants of the village of Skirvytė, smelling the smell of Litauische Wurst (Lithuanian sausage), dropped everything, rushed as fast as possible to their customs office, and after receiving a border crossing stamp on their exit card, they crossed the Skirvytė river by boat and hurried to Schlaraffenland (land of plenty).

On days off from work, not only individuals, but entire families went to the market They were lured by the promise of a hearty meal.

With their mouths full of hot sausages and juniper-scented hams, the newcomers would say: Schmeckt gans gut [Ger tastes pretty good- ed.

]" It Used To Be

When the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in June 1940, official relations between Germany and Lithuania broke off The former German embassy in Kaunas began to take care of the resettlement of the German population to the Reich.

The expulsion of Germans from Lithuania and Lithuanians from the Suwałki Region and the Klaipeda Region satisfied both sides: the Soviets saw in the Germans who remained in Lithuania potential spies, while the German authorities wanted to get rid of people of non-German origin (fremdvölkische Personen) and racially cleanse the newly conquered territories After World War II, not a single meter of the former border between Lithuania and Germany remained, while the German ethnic group almost completely disappeared from the demographic map of Soviet Lithuania.

At the end of the war, the German colonists withdrew with the Wehrmacht to the territory of the Reich At the turn of 1944 and 1945, all German inhabitants left Klaipeda and only Lithuanians and Russians settled in the city.

A small group of German people still remained in the Klaipėda Region, which repatriated to Germany in the 1960s after the conclusion of treaties between the Soviet Union and Germany Former neighbors have left for good.

New neighbors After 1945, the Soviet order reigned on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea The Second World War, which affected the political division of Europe, redrawn the geographical boundaries between the East and the West.

The city of Klaipeda, where until recently the German language was spoken and German culture dominated, was settled by "Russian Lithuanians" [from the Lithuanian territories that belonged to Tsarist Russia until World War I - editor's note] transl.

] and newcomers from distant Russian spaces The new neighbors, displaced people, underestimated the heritage and culture of the region.

After all, in the post-war years, culture didn't matter The area inhabited by the Germans moved geographically to the west, and the political division of Eastern and Western Europe that began at that time has remained in its mental form to this day.

The most radical changes were to take place in the territories that fell directly into the hands of the Russians What the Allies did not destroy during the bombing of Königsberg was continued after the war - the work of destruction was carried out by displaced persons, Russian and Belorussian kolkhoz workers, their children and grandchildren brought to replace the expelled Germans.

The writer Piotr Vailis, who was brought up in Riga, wrote about them: “They came to a foreign land, hung their rugs with swans over other people's low beds, learned to sew on foreign Singer machines, and during the celebrations they took out a steadfast old pink faience from a high cupboard In empty spaces they built their own concrete.

Sometimes, for this purpose, they freed up space that had already been occupied, as in 1967, when the Royal Castle was blown up and a concrete Palace of the Soviets was built in its place For some reason, Kant, the genius loci of Königsberg that became Kaliningrad, reinforces the sense of war tragedy that has not disappeared anywhere in the course of a century, leaving a sense of post-war drama.

Having miraculously avoided bombs and bullets, the stylish Prussian Gerdauen shocks with a new name: Zheleznodorozhnyj The Kurhaus in Svetlogorsk (former Rauschen) looks as alien as the Kurzal would look like in Rauschen (future Svetlogorsk).

Oddly enough, the historical sense of discomfort of living in a foreign land, even if it was occupied by an atavistic power by law, has not disappeared for decades The material remnants of the former East Prussia were and are still being destroyed, Baltic and German names were erased from space and rewritten in the erased place: Zelenogradsk, Svetlogorsk, Sovetsk, Ozyorsk, Slavsk, Prawdinsk… Today, the actions of Lithuania's neighbors living in the Kaliningrad region, which is part of the Russian Federation, are becoming difficult to understand and predict.

This uncomfortable neighborhood raises a question for all of Europe: what is Russia? And how dangerous can it be? Such a neighbor one day offers to drink together, and the next day grabs the axe But maybe someday everything will change? Perhaps there will come a time when fences will be torn down on both sides of the border, new roads and harbors will be built in anticipation of the arrival of neighbors? I wanted to instill a new thought in his head: "Why should a neighborhood wall be a guarantee? It's more about cows, but there are no cows here.

Before I build a wall, I should know what I'm separating myself from, what I'm walling up, And who I'm an affront to by building a wall There is a force against the border walls, Which wants to tear them down.

” – Dwarves maybe – I should have added I wanted to hear it from him.

I see Him place a boulder on top, Holding it firmly with both hands, Like a warrior from the Stone Age He moves in the darkness, which seems to me Not only the darkness of shadows, but of thick trees.

Never again will a proverb grow above your father, Which cherishes wisdom as high as possible, Saying : "The wall is a guarantee of good neighbourhood " [translated by Leszek Elektorowicz] Vygantas Vareikis – historian, publicist, enthusiast and researcher of the history of Klaipeda Land and Little Lithuania, author of numerous publications devoted to this issue.

The text was the author's lecture at the XXVI International Thomas Mann Festival "Cultural Landscapes: Neighborhood", July 9-16, Nida, Centrum Kultury im Thomas Mann.

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