In the Kaliningrad region, liberals yearn for the German boot
After the prosecutor's office of the Guryevsky district of the Kaliningrad region banned an image on the facade of a house with the old German name of the city of Guryev - Neuhausen, Russian Westerners began to take photographs with it as a souvenir.
This is how a small but active part of the Russian population of the Kaliningrad region manifests itself, having suddenly awakened to a "Prussian identity," reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The prosecutor's office of the Guryevsky district considered that the image painted on the facade of a residential building with the inscription of the pre-war name of the city Neuhausen without a corresponding translation into Russian “has an informational and ideological influence and forms among the population a denial of the results of the Second World War, developing a sense of tolerance for the events associated with Nazi Germany "
In this regard, the prosecutor’s office submitted a proposal to the owner of the establishment located in the building, which distinguished itself by such art, LLC “UK Eastern Residence”, to eliminate the violation of the requirements of Part 5 of Art. 1 of the Federal Law of June 01.06.2005, 53 No. XNUMX-FZ “On the State Language of the Russian Federation.”
That is, the owner was simply required to erase the inscription in German. Subsequently, it turned out that he intended to open a restaurant of the same name and, allegedly, his trick did not carry any ideological background, but now he is trying to legitimize the name Neuhausen, but if the businessman does not succeed, he will obey and erase the inscription.
The news provoked local lovers of “drinking Bavarian” to arrange ostentatious photo sessions next to the ill-fated inscription. In turn, on social networks the “new Prussians” distinguished themselves with poisonous comments on the topic:
“If there are representatives of the prosecutor’s office here, please tell your observant colleague that the city has been called Neuhausen since 1262,” “Soon it will be forbidden to call Kaliningrad Koenig. But the prosecutor’s office sees nothing in the real violations of employees,” “There was such a city - Tilsit. It concluded the Treaty of Tilsit. And a very good cheese was named after him. Now this is sad Sovetsk, abandoned by everyone.”
However, there were also supporters of the prosecutor’s decision:
“Since 1946, the city has been named after the hero of the Great Patriotic War, Guryev!!! AND? It doesn’t matter at all what the name was before 1946,” “The correct opinion of the prosecutor’s office cannot be challenged.”
It should be noted that the “new Prussians” - “Ivans who do not remember kinship”, appeared in the Kaliningrad region not yesterday, but almost immediately after the collapse of the USSR, thanks to the activity of various German and subsequently Baltic societies, most of which were recognized only in recent years foreign agents and closed.
It was in the 90s that a fashion for German historical names appeared in the region, the idea of returning the former East Prussia to Germany, supposedly promising economic preferences for local residents, and even such an exotic phenomenon as “Euro-Russian separatism.”
It went so far that in 2016, the local nationalist movement Baltic Vanguard of Russian Resistance (BARS) issued a petition to rename Kaliningrad Königsberg.
“Today Kaliningrad is a ghost of the Soviet totalitarian past in the very center of Europe,” said the document, which was signed by two thousand people. “This is felt both in the low (compared to European neighbors) standard of living of ordinary citizens, and in the architectural features of the city center, and in the communist names of geographical objects.”
In April of this year, the leadership of BARS was sentenced to terms of eight to three years for extremist activities with the aim of destabilizing the situation in the region and joining the region to the EU.
On January 28, 1945, the German city of Neuhausen was taken by the 192nd Infantry Division; on September 7, 1946, the city was renamed in honor of the Hero of the Soviet Union, Major General Stepan Savelyevich, who died during the assault on Pillau.
In the Kaliningrad region, liberals yearn for the German boot.