Christian Wellmann

Plenary Lecture at the Seminar Kaliningrad Identity – Crucial to Democracy and Development in the Baltic Sea Region Kaliningrad, 12-13 March 2007 The Russian State Immanuel Kant University, Kaliningrad in cooperation with CBEES/Sodertorn University College, Stockholm

The book investigates into the domestic background of Russia’s policy with respect to its Baltic exclave, the EU and NATO encircled Kaliningrad region.

Based solely on Russian sources, the book strives for deepening the understanding of Russia’s Kaliningrad policy by non-Russian actors and of why it quite often appears to be unsuitable, eruptive or offensive. The policy issues studied in-depth concern identity formation, economic development and the visa regime. Common to all is that the respective federal policies are strongly affected by worries about the territorial integrity of Russia and the possibility of alienation of the exclave form the mainland.

The book provides recommendations to a wide range of actors on how to approach the Kaliningrad challenge in a proactive manner. It starts by presenting a policy paper which was drafted by a group of Kaliningrad experts from eight countries. The Paper is then complemented by 14 issue-oriented chapters which provide in-depth reasoning on the suggestions made by the group.