Borders in Post-Socialist Europe: Territory, Scale, Society by Tassilo Herrschel

Author:Tassilo Herrschel [Herrschel, Tassilo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: European, Political Science, World
ISBN: 9781317173113
Google: sB3tCwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 29881123
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

5.1a Defensive Bordering: Kaliningrad Region as a Mental and Political ‘Fortress’

The end of the Soviet Union created a particular ‘oddity’ in the Baltic area, the Kaliningrad Region, which, since 2004, had become a Russian exclave within the European Union’s territory. The result is that ‘external EU border’ has less to do with geography – the border is not on the outside of EU territory – than international state law and international relations. Kaliningrad oblast, therefore, projects topics and challenges of the international dimension onto a territory of a regional scale and legal standing. It is part of the Russian state, ruled from Moscow – but it is not a contiguous part of the Russian state space. Investigating and seeking to understand the particularities of the Kaliningrad region, its territoriality and thus borderness, require a look at both explanations and concepts of regionality, that is the simultaneity of its international and sub-national perspective, such as attributed to ‘new regionalism’ (see Chapter 1). The inherent scalar fuzziness of that reference is underlined by the underlying dynamics over the last 20 years in the southern part of the Baltic Sea Region in general, and those of the Kaliningrad region in particular. The result has been a temporalisation of the exclave’s territorial meaning and relevance in general, and this has defined and re-defined the role and nature of its borders. It is this wider, international relevance of the Kaliningrad oblast’s nature, and the position of the bounded exclave, punching much above its political–economic weight, which together have attracted Moscow’s and Brussels’ attention (Holtom, 2002). Yet outside its role as a localised indicator of Russian–EU relationship, Kaliningrad has little in terms of political or economic meaning and presence on the European political–economic mental map. Its sheer geographic location suggests peripherality and marginality, and the fact that it was inaccessible for nearly 50 years until the early 1990s, and since then has had a clearly awkward relationship between its geo-political nature and geographic location, has further contributed to its having falling off the radar screen of European business and politics.

The particular position of the Kaliningrad oblast has drawn much attention to the nature of its border, and the changing perceptions and practicalities of its ‘traversability’. Much of this revolves around the border regime, rather than the actual delimitation of the ‘border line’, as it is through this that political relationships and aspirations are projected. The so-called Kaliningrad Puzzle (Joenniemi et al., 2000) refers to the unclear range and role of, and relationship between, political and economic actors in the triangular relationship between Kaliningrad, Moscow and Brussels, where shifting political interests and concerns at national and international level frame the regional nature of the Kaliningrad oblast. Ultimately, it is down to the region’s political actors to identify avenues of political lobbying – after the definition of strategic goals – and networking, thus taking a more creative, proactive approach, instead of viewing themselves as merely passive recipients and executors of Moscow-defined policies, political guarantees and economic support. The

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