TALLINN – Kaliningrad, which was incorporated into the Soviet Union only in 1945 and is a non-contiguous Russian exclave since the collapse of the USSR, appears set to get its own state shield and flag, both of which appear designed to underscore the fact that this region was earlier part of the Russian Empire.
           
Mikhail Andreyev, the region’s cultural minister, said that the new state shield will feature a fortress "with open gates" symbolizing Kaliningrad’s role as a Russian border region and a golden "E" in honor of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna who ruled the area for seven years in the 18th century.
           
In addition, he said, the shield will have a blue background recalling the closeness of the sea and an amber-colored crown symbolizing one of the most important industries of the region.  The region’s flag will be red, yellow and blue, again colors more common in tsarist-era heraldry than in Soviet or post-Soviet ones.
           
In Soviet times, many regions developed their own regional symbols, which often highlighted their distinctiveness from the country as a whole. And since 1991, even more have done so.  But despite being part of the USSR since World War II, Kaliningrad had lacked such markers of its distinctiveness.
           
Now, as the region prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its formation as an oblast within the RSFS of the USSR, Kaliningrad under Governor Georgiy Boos has decided to remedy that situation, a step that may have gained in urgency after a recent controversy over the use of a Russian Federation symbol there.
           
In May a local court ordered the city’s mayor to take down the Russian Federation state shield from city hall, arguing that federal legislation allowed its display only by federal institutions.  Mayor Yuriy Savenko has appealed this decision in the courts and says he will ask the Duma to change the law if that should prove necessary.
           
In appealing the lower court’s decision, Savenko acknowledged that its ruling was "correct from a legal point of view but from the point of view of morality, I consider the decision of the court as incorrect."  Kaliningrad’s special status as an exclave, in his view, calls for a different approach.
           
Groups within regions have frequently contested new symbols for their areas.  Thus, for example, Muslims have been unhappy with the appearance on the shields of several regions of churches or even of saints. But the Kaliningrad case is perhaps the first where regional authorities are preparing to so directly challenge Moscow.
           
And given both the Russian government’s sensitivities about Kaliningrad and President Vladimir Putin’s well-known interest in it, both the new symbols with their tsarist links and the continuing dispute over the use of federal ones may provide a measure of the directions in which not only Moscow but the Russian Federation as a whole are moving.

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