As in a mirror misshapen, tensions between Moscow and the West are reflected in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, and has contaminated the idea of baptizing the airport of that region in the past (East Prussia) with the name of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), his most illustrious son.
Kant, which opened a new epoch in the history of philosophy, spent his entire life studying, writing and teaching in Königsberg (capital of East Prussia, today the city of Kaliningrad). The region was conquered by the soviet troops in their advance against the nazi invaders during the Second World War and renamed also as Kaliningrad in 1946. The Soviet authorities expelled the German population and replaced by contingents of soviet citizens, mainly from the regions most devastated by the war, such as Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. In the enclave, in a state quite ruinous, are still historical cities of germany look spooky, who were baptized with names soviets.
During the confrontation between Prussia and Russia in the framework of the so-called War of the Seven Years (1756-1763), Kant was a subject of the Russian Empire. In Kaliningrad, next to the reconstructed cathedral, where they held ceremonies, orthodox and protestant, is the tomb of the philosopher, to which you are devoted also a statue and a plaque, as well as the local University that bears his name. Kant tends to be a source of pride for the kaliningradenses, who like to refer to him familiarly rusificando your name with the patronymic, Immanuel Ivanovich Kant.
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Kaliningrad is the headquarters of the fleet of the Baltic, Russian and, because of its history and location, encysted between Lithuania and Poland, causes feelings ambiguous in the politicians and officials sent from Moscow to administer the region. When relations with neighbours were good, Kaliningrad is presented as a place of convergence and encounter. Now, in these times of tensions, the enclave has become a focus of suspicion in a new front of Cold War between Russia and the Atlantic Alliance, that are reinforced precisely on these boundaries. The proposal to name the airport with the name of Kant has been produced in this latter context.
In the framework of a program for humanizing 45 airports russians with names of famous characters, that of Kant, was in the lead for Kaliningrad. While you were voting in the poll online, his statue, his tomb and its memorial plaque, was attacked by vandals that the pintarrajearon, and also in Kaliningrad were distributed leaflets in which the philosopher was qualified of Canlı Bahis “the enemy” and “traitor” to the motherland Russian. In the end, Kant was overtaken by the Russian empress Elizabeth Petrovna (Elisabeth I of Russia) and had to share the second place with the admiral soviet Alexandr Vasilevski, who led the assault on Königsberg in 1945. It was in the time of Elizabeth, when Königsberg was integrated to Russia and was later returned to Prussia in 1762.
Plaque in honour of Kant in Kaliningrad. Vitaly Snow GETTY
The most publicized, however, was not the change of direction of the vote, but the speech given by the vice-admiral Igor Mujametshin, chief of staff of the fleet the Russian Baltic, his sailors. Of uniform, the admiral exhorted his subordinates, also in uniform and in formation to the weather, not to vote for Kant, according to a video disseminated by the information service Novii Kaliningrad on YouTube.
“Kant is a person who betrayed his homeland, that he humbled himself and crawled on his knees to give him a professorship at the university where she gave classes, wrote a few books incomprehensible that no one here has read or will read never”, vociferó the official. The vice-admiral called to the sailors and their relatives who play by the marshal Vasilevski, on the grounds that a place where “he poured the blood of soldiers and soviet officers may not carry the name of a foreigner”.
The opposition to Kant, for reasons that are supposedly “patriotic” russians, it is a reflection of the transpositions of the past to the present. According to the deputy of State Duma, Marat Baríev, representative of Tatarstan, can not say that Kant is a fellow-countryman, and to baptize the airport with your name on it is an offense to the veterans of the Great Patriotic War (waged by the USSR against the nazi invaders from 1941). In recent years, officials and politicians sent from Moscow to Kaliningrad have been reluctant about the “germanisation” of the local inhabitants, a term that characterize the russians who, while feeling the citizens of this country, you assimilate the characteristics of this environment committee and pervade its history.
In 2017, in Kaliningrad, after being declared a “foreign agent”, is closed the House Russian-German.
