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Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad City
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Kaliningrad is located in the extreme west of Russia on the River Pregel. It is the centre of an administrative district of the same name and is an important commercial and industrial centre. Since the Baltic states became independent and Kaliningrad became completely enclosed, and ... isolated from the main Russian territory, the city has been facing massive economic decline. Important economic fields include mechanical engineering, chemical industry and musical instrument manufacture. Due to severe bomb damage during the Second World War, historical buildings in Kaliningrad, such as the 14th century cathedral, still lie in ruins in the city centre. Due to current economic difficulties, building substance and infrastructure are also subject to widespread deterioration.
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Kaliningrad was founded in 1255 as a fortress for the Teutonic Knights by King Ottocar II of Bohemia. The city joined the Hanseatic League in 1340 and became the seat of the grand master of the Teutonic Order after the Knights lost Marienburg to Poland in 1457. From 1525 until 1618, Kainingrad was the residence of the Dukes of Prussia when union between Prussia and Brandenburg was effected. In 1701 it became the coronation city of the kings of Prussia.
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Kaliningrad is connected by channel with Baltiysk, an ice-free port on the Baltic Sea that serves as a Russian naval base. The city is linked by air with Warsaw, Moscow, and other capitals. While it was part of the USSR, from 1945 to 1991, Kaliningrad was a major industrial and commercial center. Among the principal manufactures of Kaliningrad were ships, machinery, chemicals, paper, and lumber. In recent years, the city's economy has centered around legitimate and black-market trade between East and West; industrial enterprises in the region produce television sets, refrigerators, and automobiles. Amber remains an important local product.
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The Kaliningrad district was the German enclave East Preussia up to 1945 when it was incorporated into Soviet Union as a result of the WWII. The city of Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1948. The German speaking population was virtually extinct, as refugees or by deportation. Nowadays immigrated Russians, Belorusians and Ukraines make up 94% of the population.
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Russia's smallest oblast (region) of Kaliningrad is an exclave located 200 miles away from the border of Russia proper. Kaliningrad was a spoil of World War II, allocated from Germany to the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference that divided Europe between the allied powers in 1945. The oblast is a wedge-shaped piece of land along the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania, approximately one-half the size of Belgium, 5,830 mi2 (15,100 km2). The oblast's primary and port city is ... known as Kaliningrad.
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During Soviet time, the region of Kaliningrad was a strategic zone. Many areas were off limits even for locals. Though hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been moved out of the area in the 1990s, the region is still strongly militarized. The port of Baltiysk, at 30 km to the west of the city of Kaliningrad, still headquarters Russia's Baltic Fleet.
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Kaliningrad City