This wonderfully convoluted line from Crosby Stills Nash (now playing) just about sums up all the ambivalent attitudes to restoration in Kaliningrad.
Left to rot for fifty plus years, the former Prussian town is being extravagantly restored. But what exactly is being restored? It is not the past or the cultural heritage of any Russian who currently lives here. Yet many local Russians feel nostalgia for a time and place they never knew.
Kaliningrad is a complete paradox. After the war, while German prisoners of war were rebuilding whole Russian town centres like Novgorod in the elegant German style, Russians were busy reprocessing Konigsberg into the poured concrete, Soviet mould.
Actually, the Soviets succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They transformed the former Jewel of the Baltic into one of the grimmest, greyest towns in Europe. If you ever do an image search for Kaliningrad, you will find that visitors are as fascinated by the dilapidation and neglect of ‘German Kaliningrad’ as any of the regular tourist sights.
Once proud villas have tin shack roofs
One of the (only just) remaining ‘Eulerian‘ bridges
How could all this happen? Olga Sezneva, a Fellow of New York University, thinks that Kaliningrad is a very interesting case study (PDF) for social historians.
Yes, society needs landmarks and monuments – both as connections with the past and as reassuring milestones along the path to civilisation. But monuments are multi-faceted symbols. For many Russians – and for many years – Kaliningrad’s German architecture symbolised only fascism and the terrible cost of war.
Olga suggests that Kaliningrad has been uniquely shaped by political and economic forces. Its accentuated Soviet ‘look’ was a deliberate initiative of Kruschev, a way of blending in the former German territory with the motherland. At the time, historians collecting old town plans and records faced punishment.
All the same, the legacy of the past and the closeness to Europe, like the very German layout of Kaliningrad with its parks and fountains and resorts, could never be completely eradicated or denied. Hence the unnatural quality of Kaliningrad and the current identity crisis.
The recent restoration of the Cathedral and Immanuel Kant’s tomb was hotly disputed and most of the money was put up by Germans. Now that battle is over, and the restored Cathedral a focus of civic pride, it seems Russia is willing to put up money for a new castle.
Cathedral and Kant memorial, now restored
Nevertheless, there’s still a certain element of fantasy about these projects. The statue of Lenin – recently towed away from Kaliningrad’s main square – is factually more relevant to Kaliningraders social history than the castle they never knew. In many ways, people here are choosing their past the way they would like it to have been.
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