The territory of what is now the Kaliningrad Oblast used to be inhabited by the
Old Prussians and other
Western Balts, prior to the
Teutonic conquest in the early
Late Middle Ages. Afterwards, it was settled by
Germans (especially the western part),
Lithuanians (especially
Lithuania Minor) and
Poles (especially
Königsberg, , and the current southern border strip). The Old Prussians became extinct due to
Germanisation in the first half of the 18th century. In 1255, on the foundations of a destroyed
Sambian settlement known as , the Teutonic Order founded the city of
Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad), naming it in honour of
Ottokar II of Bohemia. The
Northern Crusades, including the
Lithuanian Crusade, were partly motivated by
colonization. The German colonist peasants, craftsmen, and merchants were predominantly concentrated in the southern part of the Teutonic State and did not move into
Nadruvia and
Skalvia due to the Lithuanian military threat. an event that sparked the
Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466). After Poland's victory in the war with the
Second Peace of Thorn, the State of the Teutonic Order became a
vassal state of Poland. During this war, the capital of the Teutonic state was moved from Marienburg (now
Malbork) to Königsberg in 1457. In 1525, Grand Master
Albert of Brandenburg secularized the Teutonic Order's Prussian branch and established himself as ruler of the
Duchy of Prussia, the first Protestant state in Europe. Polish printing continued for centuries with the last Polish publication in 1931. In 1618, the Duchy merged with the
Margraviate of Brandenburg to form
Brandenburg-Prussia, A confederation was formed in the city to maintain Poland's sovereignty over the city and region. In 1734–1736, Königsberg was the place of stay of Polish King
Stanisław Leszczyński during the
War of the Polish Succession. In 1756 Russia decided to go to war with the Kingdom of Prussia and annex the territory, which was then to be offered to Poland as part of a territorial exchange desired by Russia. The territory was occupied and annexed by Russia in 1758 during the
Seven Years' War before being returned to Prussia in 1762 when
Russia switched sides in the war. It was then reorganized into the province of
East Prussia within the
Kingdom of Prussia in 1773. The current oblast also contains the now abandoned village of
Narmeln (), which was not part of Ducal Prussia, but of the
Pomeranian Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland until its annexation by the Kingdom of Prussia the
Second Partition of Poland in 1793, and is thus part of the historic region of
Pomerania.
19th century Napoleonic invasion and occupation After the defeats of
Jena–Auerstedt, the Kingdom of Prussia was invaded and
Berlin was occupied by the French. The Court of Prussia fled to Königsberg, asking for Russian help. Russia intervened, leading to the bloody
Battle of Eylau and
Battle of Friedland in 1807. Following a French victory in the latter, both sides signed the
Treaties of Tilsit. in
Chistye Prudy In 1824, shortly before its
merger with
West Prussia, the population of East Prussia was 1,080,000 people. According to
Karl Andree, Germans were slightly more than half of the people, while 280,000 (~26%) were
ethnically Polish and 200,000 (~19%) were
ethnically Lithuanian. As of 1819, there were also 20,000-strong ethnic
Curonian and
Latvian minorities as well as 2,400
Jews, according to Georg Hassel. Similar numbers are given by
August von Haxthausen in his 1839 book, with a breakdown by county. However, the majority of East Prussian Polish and Lithuanian inhabitants were
Lutherans, not
Catholics like their ethnic kinsmen across the border in the
Russian Empire. Only in southern
Warmia did
Catholic Poles—so called
Warmians (not to be confused with predominantly
Protestant Masurians)—comprise the majority of the population, numbering 26,067 people (~81%) in
county Allenstein (Polish:
Olsztyn) in 1837. While the north of East Prussia was overwhelmingly German, the south was majority Slavic and mostly composed of Poles and
Masurians. There was also a slight Lithuanian majority in the north-eastern area of East Prussia,
Lithuania Minor. Regional and local identities were particularly strong in East Prussia - local Polish population often identified with Masuria rather than Poland, and Prussian Lithuanians also did not actively identify themselves with the Lithuanian nation. Moreover, confessional identity often prevailed over the national one - German authorities were concerned about the "Catholic-Polish axis"; German Catholics were alienated from the German nation because of the
Kulturkampf legislation, and tended to support the Polish national movement. An East German newspaper
Thorner Zeitung reported in 1871 that "not only Polish Catholics, but also a great number of German Catholics, are willing to vote for a Polish party candidate". By the end of the 19th century, East Prussia had a significant Polish minority, and German nationalist circles warned of the prospect of
Polonisation of East Prussia. The perceived weakness of Germanness of East Prussia was also reinforced by the
Ostflucht, as East Prussia suffered from both underindustrialisation and rural overpopulation. After 1876, farm prices in East Prussia fell by 20 percent, which encouraged local landowners to hire foreign workers from
Congress Poland, incidentally strengthening the Polish element in the region. The increased Slavic immigration to the region generated by the requirement of the
Junkers for cheap labour and better economic conditions in West Germany caused many German inhabitants to leave the region. Most Germans moved to work in the industrial heartland of western Germany, while others migrated abroad. Poles and Lithuanians of East Prussia also had much higher birth-rate and natural increase rates than the Germans, and rarely emigrated. Discussing the situation in East Prussia, Polish geographer
Stanisław Srokowski remarked: The Memel Territory (
Klaipėda region), formerly part of northeastern East Prussia as well as Prussian Lithuania, was annexed by Lithuania in 1923. In 1938, Nazi Germany radically renamed about a third of the place names of this area, replacing
Old Prussian and
Lithuanian names with newly invented German names.
20th century World War I and II destruction in Stallupönen, modern
Nesterov In September 1914, after hostilities began between the
German Empire on the one hand and France and Russia on the other, the
Imperial German Army was about to seize
Paris, and the French urged Russia to attack East Prussia.
Nicholas II launched a major attack, resulting in a Russian victory in the
Battle of Gumbinnen. The Russian army arrived at the outskirts of the city of Königsberg but did not take it and settled at
Insterburg. This Russian victory and East Prussia's occupation by Russia saved Paris by forcing the Germans to send many troops to their East provinces. Later, Hindenburg and Ludendorff pushed Russia back at the
battle of Tannenberg, thereby liberating East Prussia from Russian troops. Yet Russian troops remained in the easternmost part of the region until early 1915. During World War II, the was operated at modern
Gromovo mostly interring Polish prisoners, as well as several subcamps of the
Stutthof concentration camp, the Oflag 52, Oflag 60 and
Dulag Luft prisoner-of-war camps, and a camp interring
Romani people in Königsberg (see
Romani Holocaust). On 29 August 1944, Soviet troops reached the border of East Prussia. By January 1945, they had taken all of East Prussia except for the area around Königsberg. Many inhabitants fled west at this time. During the last days of the war, over two million people fled, anticipating imminent
Red Army conquest, and were
evacuated by sea.
Soviet annexation Initially, at the end of World War II in 1945, the current southern border strip passed under Polish control with Polish administration organized in the towns of
Gierdawy and
Iławka, however, the area was eventually annexed by the Soviet Union and included within the Kaliningrad Oblast. Under the
Potsdam Agreement of 1 August 1945, Königsberg became part of the Soviet Union pending the final determination of territorial borders at an anticipated peace settlement. This final determination eventually took place on 12 September 1990 when the
Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed. The excerpt from the initial agreement pertaining to the partition of East Prussia, including the area surrounding Königsberg, is as follows (note that Königsberg is spelt "Koenigsberg" in the original document):
VI. CITY OF KOENIGSBERG AND THE ADJACENT AREAThe Conference examined a proposal by the
Soviet Government that pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement, the section of the western frontier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which is adjacent to the Baltic Sea should pass from a point on the eastern shore of the
Bay of Danzig to the east, north of
Braunsberg –
Goldep, to the meeting point of the frontiers of
Lithuania, the
Polish Republic and
East Prussia. The Conference has agreed in principle to the proposal of the Soviet Government concerning the ultimate transfer to the Soviet Union of the city of Koenigsberg and the area adjacent to it as described above, subject to expert examination of the actual frontier. U.S. president
Harry Truman and British prime minister
Clement Attlee supported the proposal of the Conference at the forthcoming peace settlement. In 1946, Königsberg was added as a
semi-exclave to the
Russian SFSR and renamed Kaliningrad, after the
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
Mikhail Kalinin. Kalinin was unrelated to the city, and there were already cities named in honour of Kalinin in the Soviet Union, namely
Kalinin (now Tver) and
Kaliningrad (now
Korolev, Moscow Oblast). The German language was replaced with the Russian language, and the remaining German population was
expelled between 1947 and 1948. The territory was then re-populated with
Soviet citizens, mostly ethnic Russians but to a lesser extent also Ukrainians and Belarusians. Some historians speculate that it may have originally been offered to the
Lithuanian SSR because the resolution from the conference specifies that Kaliningrad's border would be at the (pre-war) Lithuanian frontier. According to some historians,
Joseph Stalin created it as an oblast separate from the Lithuanian SSR because it further separated the Baltic states from the West. Others think that the reason was that the region was far too strategic for the USSR to leave it in the hands of another SSR other than the Russian one. In the 1950s,
Nikita Khrushchev offered the entire Kaliningrad Oblast to the Lithuanian SSR but
Antanas Sniečkus refused to accept the territory because it would add at least a million ethnic Russians to Lithuania proper. with explosives, 1959. The last remnants were destroyed by 1968.In the Soviet era, the city was
completely closed and, with the exception of rare visits of friendship from neighboring Poland, it was practically not visited by foreigners. In 1950, there were 1,165,000 inhabitants, which was only half the number of the pre-war population. The old city was not restored, and the ruins of the
Königsberg Castle were demolished in the late 1960s, on
Leonid Brezhnev's personal orders, despite the protests of architects, historians and residents of the city. The reconstruction of the oblast, threatened by hunger in the immediate post-war years, was carried out through an ambitious policy of oceanic fishing with the creation of one of the main fishing harbours of the USSR in Kaliningrad city. Fishing not only fed the regional economy but also was a basis for social and scientific development, in particular oceanography. In 2010, the German magazine
Der Spiegel published a report claiming that Kaliningrad had been offered to Germany in 1990 (against payment). The offer was not seriously considered by the West German government which, at the time, saw reunification with East Germany as a higher priority. However, this story was later denied by
Mikhail Gorbachev.
Recent history , restored in the 1990s On 12 January 1996, Kaliningrad Oblast and
Sverdlovsk Oblast became the first oblasts of Russia to sign a power-sharing treaty with the federal government, granting them autonomy. However, this agreement was abolished on 31 May 2002. After 1991, some ethnic Germans emigrated to the area, such as
Volga Germans from other parts of Russia and
Kazakhstan. These Germans are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking and as such were rejected for resettlement within Germany under Germany's new rules. A similar migration by
Poles from the lands of the former
Soviet Union to the Kaliningrad Oblast occurred at this time as well. The situation has begun to change, albeit slowly. Germany, Lithuania, and Poland have renewed contact with Kaliningrad Oblast, through
town twinning and other projects. This has helped to promote interest in the history and culture of the East Prussian and Lietuvininkai communities. In July 2007,
Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov declared that if US-controlled
missile defense systems were deployed in Poland, then nuclear weapons might be deployed in Kaliningrad. On 5 November 2008, Russian president
Dmitry Medvedev said that installing missiles in Kaliningrad was almost a certainty. These plans were suspended in January 2009, but implemented in October 2016. In 2011, a long-range
Voronezh radar was commissioned to monitor missile launches within about . The radar is situated in the settlement of
Pionersky in Kaliningrad Oblast. A few months after the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lithuania
started implementing EU sanctions, which blocked about 50% of the goods being imported into Kaliningrad by rail. Food, medicine, and passenger travel were exempted. Russia protested against the sanctions and announced it would increase shipments by sea. In May 2023, Poland officially adopted a new name for the Kaliningrad region, changing it from "Obwód Kaliningradzki" to "Obwód Królewiecki",
Królewiec being the historical Polish name for the city of Kaliningrad. The reason given for the change is that
Mikhail Kalinin, a member of the
Soviet Politburo, was among those responsible for the
Katyn massacre, having co-signed the order to murder thousands of Polish prisoners of war. ==Geography==