Two Lithuanian conservative MPs have turned to the country’s Commission of the Lithuanian Language with a proposal to stop using the name of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
Vilius Semeška and Paulė Kuzmickienė propose using the Lithuanian name Karaliaučius instead of Kaliningrad.
According to them, the existing name is part of the Russian narrative and originated during the Soviet Union’s aggressive actions during World War II.
“The Soviet region was named after the old Bolshevik revolutionary Mikhail Kalinin. After Kalinin’s death, several towns were named after him. One of them – Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) – has retained that name to this day,” the MPs said in a statement.
According to Kuzmickienė, the Russification of the region’s place names was aimed at showing they belonged to Moscow.
In the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the two MPs say, it is necessary to review the existing names and stop the use of names alien to the Lithuanian language.
“It is high time we abandoned the Soviet legacy and stop polluting our state language with foreign names. We stand in solidarity with our Polish neighbours and urge to no longer use artificial names imposed on us in the Lithuanian language,” Semeška said.
According to Dalia Kiseliūnaitė, a researcher of East Prussia at Klaipėda University, the proposal is politicised.
“For me as a researcher of East Prussia, it would be hard to imagine that we could speak about Karaliaučius when we talk about today’s region, which is a militarised Russian territory,” Kiseliūnaitė said.
“It’s no longer Karaliaučius, we no longer have the city, that spirit, and completely new people are living there who do not share the traditions of that land,” she added.
Earlier this week, a recommendation came into force in Poland to use the name Królewiec when referring to the Russian exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania.
The country’s Ministry of Economic Development and Technology stressed that Poland was thus returning to traditional names linked to history and cultural heritage.
In response to this decision, the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “this is not even Russophobia any longer; these are processes that verge on the madness that are taking place in Poland”.
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