Russia: A city that went from being the pride of Prussia to an outpost of the Soviet empire is searching for a new role, writes Kieran Cooke in Kaliningrad.
The flagship of the Russian Baltic fleet, a heavily armed hulk whose name translates as The Impossible To Scare, lays alongside giant, tank-carrying military hydrofoils. Crowds of sailors clean gun turrets and wash down missile casings.
In Soviet times the port of Baltijsk in the enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast was among the most tightly guarded military installations anywhere. On board a ship hosting a symposium organised by the Orthodox church on regional environmental problems, we are among the first civilians allowed to dock in the port since the second World War. Even today, local citizens need permits to enter the area, which covers several kilometres.
Kaliningrad, a name which applies to both the Russian territory and its capital city, is a Soviet-style relic threatened by being left behind by the outside world. When neighbouring Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north join the Brussels club next year, Kaliningrad will find itself surrounded by the EU, cut off from the rest of Russia nearly 800km away.
"We don't know what will happen," says Olga Danilova, a local teacher and guide. "At present we don't need visas to go to Lithuania or Poland but when they join the EU, unless we fly to Russia, we'll need travel documents to visit our own country. Moscow and Brussels are turning their backs on our problems."
Kaliningrad still has a strongly Soviet atmosphere. The communist hammer and sickle is visible on the side of many Stalinist-style concrete apartment blocks. A giant statue of Lenin looks down on the city's main square; paradoxically, just behind the brooding figure, a new Orthodox church is being built. There is a smell of raw sewage in the air.
It's a far cry from the pre-war years when the city, then called Konigsberg, with its grand avenues and gracious squares, was among the most elegant in Prussia. It was a centre of culture. The 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant was born and lived all his life in the city.
The RAF blitzed much of the city in 1944 and tens of thousands died in some of the bloodiest fighting on the Eastern Front as the Red Army battled the Nazis. Stalin, who renamed the territory after one of his most devoted associates, later ethnically cleansed the area, shipping out its German population and destroying any vestiges of its Prussian past.
Kaliningrad's one million people reaped few benefits from the downfall of the Soviet empire, but plenty of disadvantages. Agriculture had been one of the mainstays of the territory's economy. Suddenly there was no longer a captive Soviet market: more than 70 per cent of the dairy herd had to be destroyed.
"Our newly independent neighbours have undergone political and economic reforms but here, perhaps more than most places in the former USSR, the old ways go on," says a lecturer at the city's university.
The most visible reminder of the old regime is a massive, half-completed, concrete edifice in the city centre referred to by locals as "The Monster". Looking like the head of some giant robot, the grandiose building was started in the 1960s but never finished. "Very few cities in the world can boast of a building as ugly as this one," says a local.
Kaliningrad has more than 90 per cent of the globe's known supply of amber. Many locals say the famed Amber Room, once one of the wonders of St Petersburg and which was looted by the Nazis, is buried deep in the bowels of "The Monster".
Amber not only has decorative uses: the local vodka (€1.20 a bottle) is flavoured with amber acid, said to be a "strong biological stimulant" and a sure antidote to hangovers.
At one time there was talk of making Kaliningrad one big duty-free zone, the so called "Hong Kong of the Baltic". Due to political wrangling and a lack of investment, the scheme never got off the ground.
Jobs are scarce. Per capita incomes are less than €100 a month. At one time up to a quarter of a million troops were based in Kaliningrad. An estimated 20,000 remain: everywhere there is abandoned, rusting military equipment.
Smuggling - everything from amber to cars, cigarettes to military hardware - is one of the territory's main industries. Yet despite all its problems, locals show no signs of wanting to break away from Moscow.
In the post-war years, hundreds of thousands of people from other parts of the Soviet empire settled in the fertile lands of Kaliningrad. While the population is a mixture of various ethnic groups, its common denominator is the Russian language and culture.
"This is a sweet piece of land," says my guide. "The Poles, the Lithuanians and the other Baltic states have their own cultures and languages. But we will always be part of Russia."
The big problem for the home of Kant is finding a new role for itself in a rapidly changing world.