Kaliningrad is Russia’s Baltic exclave built on Teutonic brick
Kaliningrad Oblast is Russia’s westernmost federal subject—a Baltic semi-exclave on historic Prussian ground. After 1945 the Soviet Union annexed northern East Prussia, expelled its German majority, and planted a Russian oblast around the port once called Königsberg.
Old Prussians and other Western Balts lived here before the Teutonic conquest; in 1255 the Order built a castle on the ruined Sambian settlement of Tvanksta, the seed of Königsberg. German peasants and merchants settled mostly the south of the Order’s state, avoiding Nadruvia and Skalvia for fear of Lithuanian raids. In 1454 the Prussian Confederation turned to Casimir IV of Poland, and after losing the war of 1519–1521 the Order remained a Polish vassal.
In 1525 Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg secularised the Order’s Prussian branch as the Duchy of Prussia, Europe’s first Protestant state, with Königsberg as ducal seat until 1701. The city printed the first Polish and Lithuanian catechisms and the first Lithuanian grammar. In 1577 serfs, mostly Old Prussians, Lithuanians, and Masurians, were forbidden to leave their lords’ estates, and in 1618 the duchy joined Brandenburg, staying under Polish suzerainty until 1660.
Frederick William I barred Poles, Samogitians, and Jews from settling in Lithuania Minor in 1724 to promote German colonisation. After Napoleon’s victory at Jena–Auerstedt the Prussian court fled to Königsberg, and the battles of Eylau and Friedland in 1807 led to the Treaties of Tilsit. In 1824 East Prussia had about 1,080,000 people, roughly a quarter Polish and a fifth Lithuanian by one count, and after 1876 falling farm prices drove emigration westward.
Lithuania annexed the Memel Territory in 1923, and in 1938 Nazi Germany replaced about a third of the area’s Old Prussian and Lithuanian place names with invented German ones. After 1945 the Soviet Union took the northern part of East Prussia, expelled the Germans, and renamed the city after Mikhail Kalinin; the oblast now lies between Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic.
Source: Kaliningrad Oblast
