Kaliningrad
Home to the mission control centre for Russian space flights, a facility owned and operated by the Energiya Rocket and Space Complex. The city and port in western Russia has a population of 425,000 (2003 est). Industries include shipbuilding, fisheries, machinery, engineering, and paper manufacture. The port of Kaliningrad remains ice-free throughout the year; as well as being an important commercial centre, it is also the principal base of the Russian Baltic fleet. There are amber deposits nearby that are considered to be the richest in the world.
History
The city developed from 1255 onwards around a castle of the
Teutonic Knights; from 1457 it was the residence of the grand master of the Teutonic Order. During the Middle Ages, it was a member of the important
Hanseatic League trading federation. It was the seat of the Dukes of Prussia from 1525–1618 and was capital of
East Prussia from 1618 to 1945, when this territory was divided between the USSR and Poland under the Potsdam Agreement and renamed in honour of Soviet President Mikhail Kalinin (1875–1946). The centre of the city was extensively destroyed in the 1945 siege, but the 14th-century cathedral has been restored.
| As Königsberg, the city was the birthplace and residence of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). |
Kaliningrad
| Oblast (region) in the western Russian Federation, the smallest province in the country; area 15,100 sq km/5,830 sq mi; population (1996) 932,000 (78% urban). The capital is Kaliningrad, and other cities include Chernyakhovsk and Sovetsk. The region is not territorially connected with the rest of the Russian Federation, and is bounded by the Baltic Sea in the west, Lithuania in the north (along the River Neman) and east, and Poland in the south. Industries include engineering, woodworking, and food industries; fishing and dairy farming. |
History The Kaliningrad oblast was formed in 1946. Before World War II, the area had been under German control, since the 17th century, as East Prussia; after the defeat of Nazism, all ethnic Germans were forcibly expelled from the region, which was resettled by Russians. Consequently, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kaliningrad became an exclave, entirely separated from the rest of the Russian Federation by the newly independent nations with non-Russian populations. |
