WI: Kaliningrad becomes a pan-Soviet settlement, and its own SSR?

Deleted member 97083

Scenario A: What if upon the expulsion of the Germans from Koenigsberg, Stalin declared Kaliningrad not a part of the RSFSR, but an SSR on its own; afterward, instead of settling Kaliningrad predominantly with Russians, Stalin sends representatives of every ethnic group (Russians, Belarusians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Latvians, Uzbeks, Chuvash, etc.) in the Soviet Union, in approximately the proportions they existed, to settle the new SSR. This would be branded as a new utopian experiment in the glorious creation of the new Soviet man and woman.

Scenario B: Alternatively, what if Stalin died at the same time that Kaliningrad was established, Krushchev takes power, and when most of the surviving gulag prisoners from the Stalin era are freed, they are resettled in Kaliningrad?
 
Scenario A: I don't see any reason why Stalin would do so.
Scenario B: I don't think that Kruschev would succeed Stalin if he would die on end of WW2. He wasn't most plausible successor even on 1953.
 
All the SSR's were nominally organized on ethnic lines, even when the titular nationality became a minority (as in Kazakhstan). It was logical for Kaliningrad to become part of the RSFSR because its settlers, even if not ethnic Russian--which the majority would very likely be in any event--would be Russified (Ukrainians and Belarusians outside their own republics tended to be very Russified).

One other possibility that I mentioned once in soc.history.what-if:

***

In the past, we have discussed the possibility of Stalin giving the former
Konigsberg area (now the Kaliningrad oblast) to the Lithuanian SSR instead
of making it an "enclave" of the RSFSR. There is another possibility that I
don't think we have mentioned, though. It occurred to me while reading
Nicholas P. Vakar's *Belorussia: The Making of a Nation* (Harvard UP 1956).
Discussing the claims made by Belorussian nationalists in the West after
World War II, he notes that they rejected the boundaries of the Belorussian
SSR, and not only made territorial claims against all five Belorussian
neighbors--Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland--but that "even
East Prussia is included in the claims." Vakar quotes emigre publications as
arguing that East Prussia would be a "just compensation for the enormous
devastation which Belorussia suffered at the hands of the Germans" and would
give Belorussia "a sea outlet necessary for its economic development." (p.
279)

So suppose Stalin decides to follow this analysis? After all, he emphasized
the immense suffering Belorussia underwent at the hands of the German
occupiers as one reason for giving it a UN seat. "Comrades, the Belorussian
people are not greedy for territory--on the contrary, in the interests of
friendship with Poland, they have even given back areas like Bialystok which
were part of their republic in 1939-41. But is it not just for the
Belorussian workers and peasants to at least receive some of the territory
the German fascists used to attack them on June 22, 1941?" So Belorussia
gets the Kaliningrad oblast and a narrow corridor leading to it--perhaps in
the extreme northeast part of Poland (the Suwalki area--which some maps by
Belorussian nationalists claim as Belorussian territory anyway), perhaps in
the adjacent area of Lithuania. (After all, the USSR had restored Vilnius to
Lithuania, and by doing away with East Prussia had forever removed the German
threat to Klaipeda. In gratitude to Comrade Stalin for these great gifts,
the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR is happy to grant his request to
cede a narrow strip of land to the Belorussian SSR for its great
contributions to the anti-fascist cause...)...
 
Funny you should ask. It's a combination of scenario A and B. :^)

Anyway, Scenario A doesn't seem too likely, given that while Stalin has the will to make Kaliningrad separate from the other SSRs, it's more likely he'll leave it overwhelmingly Russian. He's never one to trust minorities, to the point of self-loathing, I suspect (he is Georgian, after all). A reply on my earlier thread suggested making it an oblast-sized closed city, directly governed from Moscow. Still, if he needed his ego stroked at some point, it could happen.

As for scenario B, it's not too likely either. I mean... Siberia is a much better place to leave gulag prisoners and other unsatisfactory people, mostly because there's no escape from Siberia. Still, it can be done as long as someone could convince Khrushchev to sponsor the project. Of course, there are implications to it. In the case of my TL, it's being a 'rehabilitation zone' for ex-gulag prisoners and other... 'voluntary migrants' from the Eastern Bloc.

That's why I feel that a combination of the two would work better. Stalin keeps Kaliningrad separate from the other SSRs as a military zone, and then Khrushchev tries making the multiracial SSR, or stuffs it with less compromising gulag inmates that could be 'reformed'.
 
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Deleted member 97083

Kaliningrad is to important as a harbor etc...
to be settled by people with questionable loyalty
But wouldn't Kaliningrad be constantly garrisoned by the Soviet Army, Soviet Air Force, and Soviet Navy, making it largely irrelevant who lived there as long as they were not pro-Western?
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
But wouldn't Kaliningrad be constantly garrisoned by the Soviet Army, Soviet Air Force, and Soviet Navy, making it largely irrelevant who lived there as long as they were not pro-Western?

I bet you, to Stalin it would not, neither to anybody else paranoid enough to become leader of the Soviet Union.

Otherwise they could have just kept the Germans. (Not all fled, many of those who did would have returned home given the opportunity)
 
This was pretty much OTL, except that Kaliningrad wasn't a independent SSR. So the answer to TTL is that in 1991 there will be one more Baltic state, which happens to the Russian speaking, it will likely try to connmect to its German past (to get tourists and investments)[1] it will likely join EU in 2007. I expect it will end up like a smaller Latvia, somewhat well functioning, but with a strong dominance by oligarchs..

[1]this pretty much happen in OTL, but here they will do so to large extent because of lack of money from Moscow, so we will likely see German become co-official language and it may be renamed Kantgrad/Kantburg.
 
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