Paulina Siegień
A Fairy Tale City (Miasto bajka: Wiele histori Kaliningradu)
POLAND
BOOK
“Make Kaliningrad Czech Again!” But what do we really know about the history of Kaliningrad? It is mainly Czechs who talk about Přemysl Otakar II; the most famous native of Königsberg is, of course, Immanuel Kant. However, even his monument has been subjected to vandalism as a reminder of the German past. On the other hand, Kaliningrad Russians do not like to see people from St Petersburg or Moscow moving into this enclave. Until recently, the porous borders gave them a sense of closer belonging to Europe and a certain uniqueness. However, we see mainly tactical Iskander missiles deployed on NATO borders today. All this is Kaliningrad, one of the keys to understanding another part of the mosaic called the Russian Federation.
Published by Absynt, 2023
AUTHOR
© Martyna Niećko
Paulina Siegień (* 1986) is a Polish journalist, translator, ethnographer, and Russianist, a graduate of Eastern Studies at the University of Warsaw, and currently a PhD student at the University of Gdansk. She wrote about Kaliningrad for the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza for several years and regularly visited the Kaliningrad region. She has also co-operated with the Polish Newsweek, the Krytyka Polityczna website, and the bimonthly New Eastern Europe.
TRANSLATION
Michala Benešová
