Crisis Management Challenges in Kaliningrad by Eugene Krasnov & Anna Karpenko

Author:Eugene Krasnov & Anna Karpenko [Krasnov, Eugene & Karpenko, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Freedom, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Political Science, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781317157656
Google: OxwGDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30000697
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The street children of the Russian enclave in Europe: an international perspective

The international perception of the street children phenomenon as one of the most suggestive symbols of the children’s issues is important in the Kaliningrad case. As the research in social anthropology shows, the images of Russian straßenkinder10 in the 1990s was an important means to support the symbolic production of the threatening eastern neighbour, articulated in terms of ‘cold’, ‘brutal’, ‘vodka’, ‘poor’ and ‘criminal’ (Salein 2005, 115). Constructing Russia as the European ‘other’ has been a long tradition in international relations. Also, after the Cold War, Russia was largely depicted as the ‘other’ in political discourses (Neumann 2002). In the case of Kaliningrad, the images of the street children visualized western fears based on perceptions of the Oblast as a frustrating source of misery, HIV, tuberculosis, drug trafficking, prostitution and mafia threats posed by the Russian enclave situated within the safe, law-obedient and rich Europe.

The international discourse on children’s issues has also been shaped under the considerable influence of the German ‘nostalgic tourists’, the former inhabitants of Northern Eastern Prussia who were displaced from the region as a result of the Second World War (categorized as ‘Vertriebene’ or expellees) and were allowed to come to visit their former homeland again from the beginning of the 1990s. The representations of children in the context of the nostalgic tourist impressions were driven not as much by aspirations to understand what was going on in the present Kaliningrad region but rather by persistent endeavours to work out, consciously or unconsciously, their own old trauma of the lost Heimat, to search for the traces of the German past which is perceived as mostly irretrievably gone (‘alles kaputt’), and to mourn their personal tragic experiences of the past. The Russian Kaliningrad was assigned to exist only as an element in the nostalgic scenery of East Prussia. The contrast between the present Russian settlements in the countryside, which were shown in a state of permanent decline with disappearing pre-war infrastructure and a degrading population, on the one hand, and the beautiful undamaged nature landscapes reminding them of the old good Heimat, on the other hand, was one of the most efficient means to construct a nostalgic perspective in the media. The impressive examples of such othering of the existing life in a subtle artistic manner can be found in the documentaries by Volker Koepp, in particular in his last film devoted to the children from a small village in the east of the region (Holunderblüte 2007). The opposition ‘nature’ – ‘people’, ‘past’ – ‘present’ is represented by the film title, An Elderflower: Children in the Kaliningrad region – Northern Eastern Prussia. The work of alienation of the protagonists has been conducted by indirect, fine and poeticized means. Although the comments of the author do not occupy much of the film, the children are given the lead role and their parents and families are not present in any single scene. The children are filmed throughout the

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