Talk:Kaliningrad Oblast/Archive 1

Archived talk of 2004
Gentlemen!

Allow me to express my feelings about this article as a Russian. It is very well written, except for the last 2 or 3 paragraphs about devastation, negligence etc. This part of the text sounds like author's personal point of view. Harsch critics of the Soviet regime's activities in the area seem to be taken from some second-rate media source. And now about the short description of the second link to a Kaliningrad website - it's full of LIES. I checked out the web-site and its full of pictures of buildings ravaged by war (no kidding!), not just recently built edifices neglected by the Soviet government to the point of ruins. THERE'S A BIG DIFFERENCE between war and simple negligence. I agree, after almost 60 years they could've found the money to fix all this mess, but hey, that's a different story. I vote for the deletion (or accurate rephrasing) of the last few paragraphs of Kaliningrad's "modern history" and a misleading link.

KNewman 19:47, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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 * I'm with you! Space Cadet 20:07, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * I also support KNewman, even though I can imagine that even the newer buildings can look terribly neglected to an eye of a Westerner. That, however, would be true for most of Russia, not just for Kaliningrad Oblast.--Ëzhiki 20:12, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

A few notes for user:H.J.: --Larry Sanger - To Larry Sanger
 * 1) It seems that in the German, the name might be "Oblast Kaliningrad," but in English (as in the Russian: Kaliningradskaya Oblast'), "Oblast" goes second in the name.
 * 2) Please bear in mind that Wikipedia articles are to be written from a neutral point of view.  This one wasn't.  The first paragraph makes (made) it sound as if Kaliningrad were merely a temporary occupation by Russia, and that the proper name for the place is "East Prussia"--which is both partisan and misleading.  Moreover, nearly all the information you gave here was of a historical nature (you say absolutely nothing about what Kaliningrad Oblast).  I strongly recommend that you state whatever objections you have to the current political situation explicitly--that is, as long as your views might be representative of some Prussian advocates.  What would be really interesting to me is an article about the sort of Prussian advocacy that you enjoy engaging in here on Wikipedia.  Is there a group of Prussians who want a Prussian homeland?  I simply don't know.  Would be interesting to learn that in an encyclopedia article about the subject.
 * 3) For clarity, most of us have be putting the subject of an article in bold in the first sentence of the article.

German Provinces East of Oder/Neisse Line

A "Speech by the Hon. B. Carroll Reece of Tennessee In The House Of Representatives of May 16,1957" clearly states the illegality of the Soviet Union take-over of the "German Provinces East of Oder-Neisse Line".

All of Germany was under occupation from 1945 to 1994.

1949 two different temporary states were created, while the third part of Germany, east of the Oder -Neisse Line ,was taken over by military occupation by Soviet Union under Stalin. Stalin "gave" a part to Poland under administration in "exchange" for the Ukraine (Curzon Line) which Poland had militarily conquered from Russia after 1920.

The two temporary states of split Germany the Bundes Republic and the Deutsche Democratic Republic, communist (GDR) signed some treaties. They were never representative of the third part of Germany, militarily occupied and administered by Soviet Union and Poland until a peace treaty. It is not illegal to militarily occupy other land. But is is illegal by international law to expel the inhabitants and replace them with their own and to keep the land.(This is what the Soviet Union did). This law is in effect at least since 1907. (Therefore it would also be illegal for Poland to keep the Ukraine, conquered after 1920 ?)

The millions of people expelled Heimatvertriebene are scattered over many countries. A large part were taken in as refugees in other German lands (states). They never got to vote or make treaties or have any decision on their homelands. The expellees (see Heimatvertriebene) did sign a charter, that they refrain from revenge actions and are working for a free Europe. The expellees have never renounced the rights to the homelands. The homeland-expellees are the ones rebuilding the towns and churches in the land currently under Poland and a book publisher :Rautenberg Verlag of Leer, West Germany, from East Prussia is now in the city council in "Kaliningrad". The inner city of Elbing (Elblag in Polish) was still in ruins in 1995 (since Soviet attacks of January 1945). It is now being rebuilt and tourism is greatly upheld by Heimweh-Touristen "homesick tourists", people not allowed to see their homeland for 50 years.

Poland signed an agreement for dual language, Polish and German. Therefore it is very appropriate to keep using the original German names.

The 1995 National Geographic Atlas shows East Prussia and Silesia.

I have a 1998 World Atlas from Liber Kartor, Sweden showing todays Poland with dual names : Elblag Elbing, Gdansk Danzig, Stargard Szczecinski, Choszczno Arnswalde ,etc. Using German language was outlawed and persecuted under Communist Poland and Russia.

Today 25% of people living in Poland speak German.

It is absurt for some wikipedians now wanting to Polonianize or Slavitize everything German.

To the Prussian question :July 20, 1932 the Prussian government under Otto Braun in Berlin was ousted by military coup. Dictatorship then took over. Last attempt to regain goverment failed when the "Attentat on Hitler" 1944 did not succeed. Otto Braun, who had to take refuge in Switzerland ,approached the US to reinstate the legal government after the end of the war. The Allies were not interested in re-establishing legal government. They wanted military occupation government (in the best interest of their economy). From 1945 to 1949 Allied Control Council was highest authority. After that broke down, the two partial German states seperately were under different military occupation until 1994 .The 3rd part of Eastern Germany under Polish and Soviet/Russian administration is still in their possession.

As to the Eastern German lands, since 1945 overwhelmingly occupied by Slavs ? This is similar to the situation a 1000 years ago, when so many Avars ,Slavs, Hungarians, whatever had flooded into Germania.

What will be ? Only the future can tell.

Today 25% of people living in Poland speak German. -- hmm, that would mean 10 million Poles speak German. Come to Poland and see how far you will get. -- WojPob


 * Sorry -- the last bit about comparing the 9th century invasions to modern re-divisions of Europe is just silly. Please try to remember that the same period saw other Germanic types, e.g., Vikings, taking over a lot of Europe, too.  They don't seem to have cared much that they were overrunning, conquering, plundering, loting, raping, pillaging, etc., their Germanic (Frankish) brethren.

As for the Hon. B. Carroll Reece -- what was the response of the rest of Congress? you have shown that one lonely congressman from Tennessee thought that the partitions after WWII were wrong -- and in the middle of the most virulent period of anti-communism this country (USA) has ever seen. It would be interesting to see what the response was. JHK - It did not stop Frankish (that is German Charlemagne) from killing 4000 Saxons, when it did not fit his plans that they wanted to remain "heathen" and not be overtaken by Franks, and putting Abodrites or Wends in German land and removing Saxons.

It did not stop emperor Otto III with his lofty capital in Rome ideas ,from celebrating brotherhood with Boleslaw I, when together they had Voijech Adalbert of Prague , educated in Magdeburg, trying to conquer Prussia.

1200 to 1000 years ago Vikings were the scourge of all of Europe. Today they are idolized.

I would also like to find out about the response to the congressman from TennesseeHon. B. Carroll Reece. Does anyone know ??

What I do know, it was made before Chancellor Adenauer came to the US. We all know that the Cold War lasted a lot longer and we do know that Pres. Kennedy and Nikita Krushov tried again and what happenen to them.

To WojPob, in 1995 I did travel by train ( still the old Reichsbahn German trains) through eastern Brandenburg Silesia and West/East Prussia  all east of the Oder/Neisse rivers. I was surprised that on the way I met many young people who speak German as well as Polish. In Danzig Gdansk in the park at the Rote Rathaus Ratusz a young man spoke to my teenage daughter .She answered in English that she does not understand Polish. So he spoke English. An old lady, who is one of the "Autochthones" (the original German inhabitants of East Prussia and around Danzig, who were able to remain in the homeland) told me that all her children speak German and English too. One daughter works at the Schichau Werke. All this in todays Poland, after the Communists. I did see the communist or militarist style Gdynia harbor ,built out of spite and out of place amongst the quaint little villages of Prussia.

The 25 % German language speakers is a figure I have read in newspapers. I do come across many websites from Poland, often business sites, in Polish and German and often also in English.

Again on honesty in recording true events, I did see M. Gorbachov (while still in office) on TV, as he attended a classroom in Russia and told the young people, put away your (current communist) history books. They are not true.

How many other countries in the world had or have this courage ? user:H.J.


 * Hmmmmm, quaint German villages. Like Wilhelmshavn?  HJ, 20th century harbors, civilian or military, wherever they are were built in much the same style, which (surprise!) was mainly invented by German and British engineers in reaction to the 'quaint' revival styles of the mid-19th century.  Docks and warehouses and factories all over the world look pretty much the same after 1850 - and not because of communism, but because engineers agreed (more or less) on the idea that efficiency in design meant certain stylistic things (like long, straight lines made of poured concrete).  If anyone wanted to build a new harbor after 1900 to serve the larger ships of the 20th century, that's what they would have built.  Just one more thing that you're wrong about. I am, among other things, a serious practitioner of architectural history and will not have you saying that because the harbor at Gydynia reminds YOU of a communist building that the Poles did it 'out of spite'.  You have already proven that you do not understand technical etymology (as opposed to 'sounds like' etymology).  No need to take your art history any further forward.  --MichaelTinkler

user:H.J.: First of all, some of the information you wrote, above, about the history of Kaliningrad Oblast should be in the article. It's very useful and interesting! I'm not going to take a stand about Prussia, Poland, and Russia, and I guess you probably wouldn't expect me to, ignorant as I am, indeed, about history. What our historians and geographers here should do is to try to help you (user:H.J.) come to a mutually satisfactory description of the current political state of affairs. Other parts of what you wrote to me were also certainly very interesting, and it's possible, for all I know, that they could have made up part of a (NPOV!) article about something like "Prussian advocacy," or whatever an article on this should be called. I think so, actually. You certainly seem to know a lot about it, anyway: so, in English, what would be the name for the movement, or whatever we should call it, in favor of reinstating Prussia? Would you be interested in writing about such a movement? Surely you aren't the only one with your point of view, and surely modern-day Prussians are organized to some extent, eh? For us to understand you, we need a report on that.

It's great, as far as I'm concerned, that you write articles that inform us about Prussian history and geography--but it's also important, to me, that you write those articles so that they're not merely Prussian advocacy. Just to pick the first example at hand, you wrote an article about Trakehnen, which, apparently, was a city in Prussia (which, diplomatically speaking anyway, no longer exists: so we don't know where, in Europe, it exists; Poland? Russia?  Germany?). But there is no information about the city today. Given your proclivities, we can't even be sure if the city is called "Trakehnen" today. So we have some interesting information about the horses, and nothing about how many people live there now, what the industries are, etc., or even what it's called! I'm not expecting you to write the perfect article, but this does seem like very important information to omit. Now, if what you were working on is an encyclopedia of Prussian advocacy, then perhaps your entry about Trakehnen would be more plausible. But you're not, and you've got to get that into your head--you're working on a general encyclopedia which has a very decided policy against bias! --Larry Sanger -- Something to keep in mind is that almost every boundary in the world is unfair, arbitrary, and leaves someone dissatisfied. Something that helps in a general purpose encyclopedia is to move out of advocacy mode (this is the RIGHT border) and into description mode (this is how various groups of people view and feel this border and this is why.)

Also, speaking as someone who does have strong feelings about some borders which I think are in the wrong place, there are some positive benefits for being able to get out of advocacy mode into description mode. First of all, being in advocacy mode makes people not listen to you. One thing that is very instructive for me is reading stuff that Hungarians and Romanians write about each other about Transsylvania. It's instructive because they both sound like idiots to me, and there is the realization that I can sound like an idiot when I talk about my issues to someone who doesn't have as much an emotional stake.

The second and more important reason for being able to go into NPOV mode is that it helps you figure out how to get what you want. *You* might think that your cause is self-evidentally correct and that anyone who thinks otherwise is foolish, but I've found that people on the other side of the fence usually have good reasons for believing what they do, and if you understand those reasons, you can more effective deal with them. -- Chenyu

Thank you to MichaelTinkler, Larry Sanger and thank you and welcome to you Chenyu. I have not seen your name before. I appreciate all your helpful messages, also JHK's. And you are all completely right.

To Larry, I am writing for myself, by myself. Until 10 or now 11 years ago, all info on eastern Europe was practically tabu. What I know about the areas of Eastern Germany and Easter Europe is all up to 1945, mostly verbal only. In the last 12 years I purchased many books on the subject, but there were none in English.

Someone else currently living there needs to update from 1945 till now. I am amazed at the daily appearances of new material on internet concerning Prussia or Eastern Europe in general, and more importantly, it is in English. Because of your suggestion,I checked Trakehnen again on http://www.altavista.com (My best search engine previously ,"webtop. com",is gone). To my surprise, I found more new info and for the first time I found out , what the name of the town of Trakehnen is in current Russian : Yasnaya Polyana (Poliana) Polje = field in Slavic. http://www.euronet.nl/~jlemmens/trakehnen.html. Please take a few minutes and look at all the pictures taken by Joost Lemmens of Netherlands. They speek volumes of todays conditions in the Kaliningrad area. user:H.J.

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Re. the name "East Prussia" being "both partisan and misleading" I would like to remark that the current Russian inhabitants of the region call their homeland this way (Vostochnya Prussia -- no, maybe not the military and top officials, but the common people anyway) -- just because it IS East Prussia, and they see no need to hide this fact. In fact they are generally quite interested in and open-minded about its German past.

Even the town of Kaliningrad is still being called "Kënigsberg" or simply "Kënig" by the man in the street, as well as this name being used by many local enterprises.

BTW, the name of "Yasnaya Polyana" roughly translates as "Clear Fields", which coincidentially somewhat relates to the old Prussian "Trakehnen", which means something like "Clearings". Coincidentially, probably, because the vast majority of modern Russian names have no relation whatsoever with the original German or Prussian ones.

Lastly, there is indeed a small local "movement" to re-form the territory into something like a fourth Baltic Republic -- a new Prussia, indeed -- although I would hesitate to say how wide-spread this sentiment is.

Joost Lemmens

P.S.: Gdingen/Gdynia had already been established as a major harbour well before the Communist period: during the time of the "Polish Corridor" it was established by the Poles as an alternative to Danzig, while during the war it was further expanded by Germany (as well as being renamed "Gotenhafen").

Today 25% of people living in Poland speak German.

Maybe 25% but for most of them German isn't their native language. There is nothing wear in fact, that many Poles speaks also foreign language. There are German people in Silesia, near Opole, but not more then 200 000. Some of them call themselves German, some - Poles and some - Silesian. swPawel - In the article it says:
 * In the days before the Iron Curtain came down, US television showed news reports from the Soviet Union. These reporters filmed the vast acres of land filled with military equipment around the harbor of Kaliningrad. They showed the train depot and the dozens of trains that were sitting there, idled for weeks or months, filled with materials, all spoiled. It was a scene of earlier massive Soviet Union military build-up and now the scene of total massive breakdown. These surrealistic visions stand in stark contrast to the vanished city of Koenigsberg, the city of Immanuel Kant and the city of kings.

Exactly how is this NPOV? Danny -- Indeed. Space Cadet -

A website with recent photos taken by Joost Lemmens of Netherlands gives samples of destruction in small towns by neglect under the Soviet Union around Kaliningrad Oblast. This site gives the Prussian German town names and the corresponding Russian names after 1945/49. It starts out with a gate to the horse breeding stables in Yasnaya Polyana and hopeful signs of new beginnings for this devastated land.

Additional statement by J. Lemmens : Re. the name "East Prussia" being "both partisan and misleading" I would like to remark that the current Russian inhabitants of the region call their homeland this way (Vostochnya Prussia -- no, maybe not the military and top officials, but the common people anyway) -- just because it IS East Prussia, and they see no need to hide this fact. In fact they are generally quite interested in and open-minded about its German past.

Even the town of Kaliningrad is still being called "Kënigsberg" or simply "Kënig" by the man in the street, as well as this name being used by many local enterprises. --- The above text really doesn't belong in the main article - there is no relevance, besides the statements there are not even true! Space Cadet 14:02 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC) --

More than 25% of Poles speak German, I'd say atleast 95% have basic understanding of German and 25-30% speak it totally fluently. I've been there quite a bit but, I can't find evidence to back this up. There is also alot of German TV in Poland.