The Poles split the difference

When the Soviets captured the historical Prussian city of Königsberg, they renamed it after their figurehead president, Mikhail Kalinin.

That name has been an annoying irritant for both the Germans and the Poles. The former still referred to that Baltic port as Königsberg, and with ample historical justification.

After all, the city was founded in the 13^th century by the Teutonic Knights who named it after the Bohemian king Ottokar. Even after the Prussian capital moved to Berlin in 1701, their kings were still crowned in Königsberg, although with less pomp than some Hanoverians, such as our own dear Charles III.

But halfway through the period I’ve so far demarcated, Königsberg belonged to Poland for a couple of centuries. Rather than finding a new name for the city, the Poles showed a singular lack of imagination by simply translating the German name into Polish, which came out as Królewiec.

Now the Poles have announced that henceforth they’ll be referring to Kaliningrad by that Polish name. I must say it doesn’t mean as much to me as Königsberg does. All I know about the place comes from books by and about Immanuel Kant, its greatest denizen, and I dismiss with contempt all claims to the same designation by the aficionados of Hanna Arendt, who was also from there.

And Kant lived neither in Królewiec nor, most definitely, in Kaliningrad. He lived in Königsberg and there he stayed, practically without ever leaving, his whole life. Every morning he went on exactly the same walk at exactly the same time, and his neighbours checked their clocks by the philosopher striding by.

I’d be happy if the city were renamed Kantberg, but my happiness doesn’t come into this. The Poles’ sensitivities do, and these are considerable. Some of those are simply national pride, similar to that of the Chinese who stubbornly refer to the places in Russia’s Far East by their original Chinese names. Northern Sea, anyone? That’s what they call Lake Baikal.

Now, the Chinese are busily colonising that area, and the time may come soon when it will be incorporated into China, making all the original names a fait accompli. The Poles probably have no reasonable hope of reclaiming Kaliningrad, but their desire to rename it is perfectly understandable.

For Kaliningrad isn’t just any old Russian name. Mikhail Kalinin was one of the six signatories to the infamous Katyn order. Following it some 21,000 Polish POWs were massacred in Katyn and elsewhere during two months of 1940.

That crime left a bleeding wound in the Polish psyche, and it has never closed because Russia has been rubbing salt into it ever since. The Soviets installed a communist regime there at about the time Königsberg became Kalinigrad, through which they ruled Poland in the time-dishonoured Soviet style for the better part of half a century.

Throughout that time the Soviets denied their guilt in the Katyn massacres, for all the incontrovertible evidence, including the aforementioned order. Then in 1990 Gorbachev finally admitted that the massacre had been perpetrated by the NKVD.

The Soviet Union was disintegrating, and it was important for the government to procure Western aid. To that end they would have been prepared to own up even to a crime they had nothing to do with, such as the execution of Socrates, never mind one they did commit, such as Katyn.

Now that Putin has girded his loins to take on the West, starting with Russia’s immediate neighbours, the Russians are again claiming it was the Nazis who murdered those Poles. Again facts don’t matter. Only political expediency does.

Next to Britain, Poland is the most ardent European supporter of the Ukraine’s efforts to keep the Soviet brand of Nazism at bay. The Poles must be partly driven by noble impulses but also, for a greater part, by their acute sense of danger. Unlike some of our pundits, they understand that, should the Ukraine fall, Poland may well be next.

There’s the rub. For the sake of good neighbourly relations the Poles, I’m sure, would be happy to forget Russia’s crimes against them. Well, if not exactly forget – such atrocities are unforgettable – then at least to pretend publicly they have forgotten.

But the Russians won’t let them. By razing Ukrainian cities from the face of the earth, murdering, torturing, raping and looting Ukrainians – all in an act of naked and unprovoked aggression aimed at restoring the Soviet Union, Poland’s slave master – the Russians keep the Poles’ resentment fresh and their fears justified.

Putin’s flunkeys have responded to that Polish philological exercise with predictable howls of Russophobia. Now, the Greek word φοβία means inordinate fear of something. But add Russo- to it, and the word begins to mean something else, to the Russians at any rate.

It denotes any attempt to resist or even decry any Russian effort to dominate Europe, or ideally the whole world. At every historical junction it has also meant disliking the current Russian dictator, these days Putin. You know, the chap whom even his closest associates call “a complete arsehole” on camera.

Hence the whole world, with the exception of Belarus and Peter Hitchens, is Russophobic. The Ukrainians are especially so, with their obdurate refusal to stay supine, docilely watching the Russians rape their country. Poland and Britain are next in the stakes of European Russophobia – they support and arm the Ukraine, and that dastardly Britain has just sent over some long-range missiles.

The Russians clearly refuse to see Królewiec as a reasonable compromise between Königsberg and Kaliningrad. No meeting halfway for them – they want the whole enchilada… or make it kielbasa – no, wait, I mean bratwurst.

Meanwhile, I hope one day Kaliningrad will officially become Königsberg again. I’d even settle for Królewiec, provided that ancient city is no longer named after that Soviet butcher.