WI: Kaliningrad awarded to the Lithuanian SSR

Dr. No

Lithuania would have similar issues with a Russian minority as Estonia and Latvia. The fact that over 90% of Lithuania's inhabitants were ethnic Lithuanian allowed a merger of the local Social Democrats and Communists. 1 million East Slavs in Kaliningrad Oblast would've meant that they'd been over a quarter of an extended Lithuania's population and the ethnic issues would be comparable to the other Baltic republics. The only real "benefit" of stopping the existence of the exclave as an exclave would be easier transportation with a very handy rail hub in Kaliningrad, no need to bypass it. Stalin knew why he conquer the central railway station with care, he needed it on his Red Army's way to Berlin.
 

rndbabylon

Banned
Assuming USSR collapses still happens in this world, could Kaliningrad become independent, join Russia, or stay with Lithuania ?
 
Augenis

Augenis

This question appears every once in a while so I'll repost what I said regarding this topic last time:

Augenis said:
Oh, this is a topic for me, I've partially written my bachelor's thesis on this (a part of the context at least)

Should note that though the complete transfer of Kaliningrad to Lithuania SSR may have been discussed among the higher levels of the Soviet government (though we have nothing solid to go on, mainly rumours), the much more likely proposal - which is an actual, physical proposal that was drawn by a commission formed by the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR in 1957 - entailed only the annexation of a relatively narrow strip in the north:
View attachment 776273
Officially, the proposal was considered because of economic incentives - the Curonian Gulf, which was a major fishing region, belonged mainly to the Kaliningrad Oblast which had a very small number of fishermen and thus caused inefficiency in fishing, and also the cities of Tilžė/Sovetsk and Ragainė/Neman were traditionally economically tied to the Klaipėda region across the other side of the Nemunas, rather than the Kaliningrad region. Of course, cultural and national sympathies likely also played a part - and, if this strip were annexed, I don't see why it would be *too* problematic? It wasn't so populated as to cause a significant demographic imbalance in future independent Lithuania, though the *concentrated* nature of the Russian minority in this Lithuanian-owned strip right next to Russian-owned Kaliningrad might.

The whole Kaliningrad oblast would be a lot more problematic for Lithuania to hold, yes, and I'm not sure if Lithuania would manage to go independent if it was shackled with such a large Russian-populated territory. At minimum, it would cause the same issues that the Russian populations in Latvia and Estonia caused back in the 1980s.
Click to expand...
 
Augenis

Augenis

Wendell said:
Didn't Stalin also make this offer?
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Stalin never made such an offer afaik (officially at least). In the first years after the capitulation of Germany he seemingly toyed with the idea of using the historic Lithuanian minority there to stake his claim on Kaliningrad (he ordered studies that declared that it was historically Lithuanian and Prussian land, such as Pavel Kushner-Knyshev's 1947 "The Western Part of the Lithuanian Ethnographic Territory"). However, once it became clear that the Allies are not interested in challenging his claim over Kaliningrad it became unnecessary.
 
West234

West234

Well it certainly wouldn’t be an out of character thing for Khrushchev to do he did a similar thing when he transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in order to boost his popularity. I don’t know if it would make a big difference in the short term there would currently be a fair amount of grumbling from both the Russians in Kaliningrad and the Lithuanians who were not thrilled about adding hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians into there lands but overall the too communities would cooperate. Kaliningrad would be content as the Soviet government would force the Lithuanian to protect their language rights and so on and they were still technically in one country with Russia. Problems would really only arise after the break up of the Soviet Union. In the Baltic states none of there Russian populations were big enough to really put up a fuss after the fall of the Soviet Union but Kaliningrad would be and the population would be concentrated enough for some kind of Transistrian like rebellion to take place. Now would it actually happen and if it would succeed somewhat depends on what Lithuania does. I think like in Moldova more nationalist eliments in the government would try and crack down on the Russians and instute things like making Lithuanian the only official language and so leading to a civil war breaking out in Lithuania. I think it is a marginal win for the Lithuanian nationalists who crush the revolutionaries with the help of Poland who wouldn’t want Russians on there border again. in the long term though I say Lithuania is a much more neutral eastern facing country like Moldova due to the strong influence of the Russian population in the government probably never joining the EU or NATO and likely a bit poorer without the major Economic connections made with western trading partners like Germany.
 

David T

Lithuania could have been considerably less ethnic-Lithuanian (and more Russian, Russified Belarusian, etc.) than in OTL if it had received the Kaliningrad Oblast. There were reports that Stalin and later Khrushchev did offer the Kaliningrad Oblast to Lithuania and that the Lithuanian First Secretary Snieckus turned down the "gift." I expressed skepticism about this in an old soc.history.what-if post (apologies for any links that no longer work) :

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Interestingly, there were rumors that *Stalin* had offered Snieckus the same thing and met with the same refusal:

"In the 1960s and '70s, rumor circulated in Lithuania that in 1945 Stalin had offered the region to Lithuania but that the then First Secretary, Antanas Snieckus, had adroitly managed to refuse. Lithuania possessed neither the manpower nor the resources to absorb and reconstruct the territory, and if it had been incorporated into the USSR, the latter's population would have been less than 60 percent Lithuanian rather than around 80 percent, which it has remained since the early 1960s. Cynics have interpreted such rumors as a clever move to defuse a potentially troublesome question while simultaneously raising the stature of the long-serving First Secretary in the eyes of nationally-inclined Lithuanians. Whether there is any factual basis for such conjectures cannot be ascertained, but their currency underscores the significance of the question in Lithuania. Romuald J. Misiunas and Rein Taagepera, *The Baltic States, Years of Dependence, 1940-1990*, p. 347. http://books.google.com/books?id=vrrBLJtDXb4C&pg=PA347

The reports with regard to Khrushchev seem a bit more plausible. First of all, it's a bit hard seeing the party secretary of a Union Republic saying No to Stalin. As I note at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/a5dd5f01f53ebd4d "Of course, Snieckus would never dare to openly object to an influx of ethnic Russians into Lithuania. What he *might* conceivably have said is something like 'Comrade Stalin, the Lithuanian working people are deeply honored by your offer of northern East Prussia, but we believe that since the great Russian people have more than any other borne the brunt of this war, they should be the ones to get this territory.' But I doubt that he even said that." It's at least a little more plausible seeing Snieckus say No to Khrushchev, at least if Khrushchev only offered it as a suggestion. Second, as Misiunas and Taagepera note, it did seem plausible that the Khrushchev reorganizations (*sovnarkhozy* or regional economic councils) would lead to the oblast being attached to Lithuania. "In the spring of 1957, a suggestion appeared that the Couronian Bay should entirely be incorporated into Lithuania, and in 1963, the management of its industry was turned over to Lithuania; its railroads and inland waterways had been under Lithuanian administration for many years. Agriculture, however, was not at that time attached to the Lithuanian sovnarkhoz, and it remains unclear whether any of these arrangements with Lithuania would have survived the abolition of the sovnarkhozy in 1965 and if so in what form..."
http://books.google.com/books?id=vrrBLJtDXb4C&pg=PA347

***

To that post, I would add that even if Lithuania were less than 60 percent Lithuanian, that would probably make little difference; after all, in Latvia, the pro-independence Popular Front won a sweeping victory in the 1990 elections even though Latvia was only 52 percent Latvian according to the 1989 Soviet census.
 
Remitonov

Remitonov

It would definitely cause serious issues for Lithuania, similar not just to the other Baltic States, but also to Moldova with the Transnistrians. The time when the Lithuanian SSR could have feasibly accepted the territory was in the immediate aftermath of WWII, after the expulsion of the German population and before the mass resettlement of Russians. Even then, there's nothing stopping Moscow from resettling Russians there anyway. It won't be impossible to retain after independence, but it would be far harder.

Now, if the territory were settled by others non-Russians, which is pretty ridiculous in and of itself with regards to the Soviet Union, maybe the Lithuanians might consider it. But even if it were groups that had also suffered repression by Moscow, it's not as if the problems that are already present with the OTL proposal would magically disappear.
 
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