Kaliningrad – an ambivalent transnational region within a European-Russian scope. Evgeniy Chernyshev

      Significant attribute of the «edge» of the Kaliningrad region is boundary modality. In principle, borders are divided into the interrelated concepts of boundaries and frontiers, both of which are separating territories of different states. According to Prescott, «there is no excuse for geographers who use the terms „frontier“ and „boundary“ as synonyms»53. He goes on to define border as the areas adjacent to the boundary, which «fringe» it54, while the borderlands refers to «the transition zone within which the boundary lies»55.

      As Prescott56 determined, boundaries are «the lines which demarcate state territory, and in most places they have superseded frontiers which were zones of varying depth which marked either the political division between two countries or the division between the settled and uninhabited areas within a country»57. It may be argued that boundaries can be compared one to the other as «the symbols and reality of the physical extent of the state, as social and political facts, with form and function different in minor details but similar in most major ways», as frontiers, on the contrary, are phenomena of history58. Frontiers cannot be isolated from their «particular historical circumstances because they are the products of historical forces which cannot be duplicated, and which in most cases are older than those entities which are framed by the modern boundaries of nation-states»59.

      As can be confirmed the border issues has appeared widespread by scholarly debate. On the one hand it concerns the boundaries of Europe. In this case the discussions include geographical, cultural or historical issues. First of all, they touch upon the broad question of European identity and the semantic dilemma of the term European. On the other hand the academic debate concerns the question of the European Union borders. Such diversity of areas results from the phenomena of boundaries60.

      Meanwhile, anthropological theories and methods enable ethnographers to focus on local communities at international borders in order to examine the material and symbolic processes of culture. This focus on everyday life and on the cultural constructions, which give meaning to the boundaries between communities and between nations, is often absent in the wider perspectives of the other social sciences61. Still the scientific studies devoted to the issue of Kaliningrad are characterized by the limited concern on the importance of daily cultural practices, which serves only as a facultative argument for the Russian political scientists and sociologists.

      Thus, I would like to contribute to a broader understanding of Europeanization, which is not comprehended as an exclusively political or historical practice, but also as a cultural practice62, then the theoretical approaches of Verdery63 and Buchowski64 in contexts of post-socialist Poland and Romania are applicable in the field of post-socialist Kaliningrad transition under European surrounding. As is known, the «collapse of the Soviet Union changed the geopolitical, economic and mental maps, and withdrew the elementary ordering paradigm, historical basis»65 in all abovementioned societies.

      Nonetheless, for many «Easterners», the West continues to be a model they want to apply, in which democracy, free market, consumption and affluence prevail. But for quite a few among them the effective realization of this goal now looms as a menace over local economic interests and national, religious and cultural identity. The principle of hierarchy has come to dominate the redefinition of identities66.