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Notes
Notes
1 In the aftermath of World War II, the Soviet Union annexed the city of Königsberg together with the northern part of the German province of East Prussia. Not only was the region renamed Kaliningrad oblast but it was also transformed into a military outpost in the Baltic Sea. From 1946 to 1991, due to its strategic importance as the Soviet Union's western-most territory, access to Kaliningrad was highly restricted. In this paper, the terms Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad region, and Kaliningrad oblast are used interchangeably as synonyms, unless there is an explicit reference to the city of Kaliningrad.
2 An enclave is commonly defined as ‘a part of a country entirely surrounded by foreign territory’. As Kaliningrad has a coastline to the Baltic Sea and therefore is not entirely surrounded by foreign territory, it is technically only a semi-enclave. Yet, for the sake of convenience, this distinction will not be maintained in the rest of the article (see Archer and Etzold Citation2010, p. 329, and Vinokurov Citation2006a).
3 The concept of a ‘pilot region’ is mentioned for the first time in the Medium-term Strategy for Development of Relations between the Russia and the EU (2000–2010), available at: http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/russia/russian_medium_term_strategy/index.htm (accessed 7 November 2007).
4 Having joined the EU in 1995, Finland launched its Northern Dimension (ND) Initiative in 1997 to raise the profile of Northern Europe within the EU, with Kaliningrad being one beneficiary of these ND projects.
5 It is noteworthy that Russian regions lobbied for the country's inclusion into the ENPI, while the central government decided to opt out of Russia's inclusion into the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The authors are grateful to Perttie Joenniemi for drawing our attention to this.
6 Schimmelfennig and Scholtz (Citation2008) have succinctly shown that EU political conditionality is effective when it includes a credible membership perspective, it is based on a consistent normative approach, and it involves low domestic power costs in the target country (see also Bauer et al. Citation2007).
7 This research article draws from the results of many years’ collaboration between the academics in the Kaliningrad region and leading western researchers (Gänzle et al. Citation2008). Evidence from different policy areas analyzed in the light of the interaction with European partners therein was gathered in the Kaliningrad region independently by the individual authors.
8 For a detailed description of how the new regimes function in practice, see Vinokurov (Citation2004a, 2004b).
9 The authors are grateful to Anna Karpenko for this assessment.
10 Article 55(2) of the PCA stipulates that Russia align its legislation with the EU's acquis communautaire in the field of economics and related areas, like business law, competition, taxation, transport, social standards, environment, etc.
11 Despite a variety of definitions, it is generally accepted that ‘Europeanization’ denotes ‘[p]rocesses of a) construction, b) diffusion, and c) institutionalization of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, “ways of doing things,” and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the making of EU public policy and politics and then incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse, identities, political structures and public policies’ (Radaelli Citation2003, p. 30).
12 On ‘political opportunity structures’ see McAdam (Citation1996, pp. 26–9).
13 According to Anna Karpenko, ‘regional subjectivity’ means thinking of Kaliningraders and defining them as a special active group with a certain degree of ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’ that is aware of its ‘special’ current situation and history, and that perceives itself not as a mere object of policy from the federal/regional power. Such perceptions would give grounds for more open attitudes toward cooperation and interaction with the European neighbors. Europe really matters here: it is a point of reference in everyday thinking, though one must notice that Kaliningrad is not exclusive in this respect; the same might be said about many border regions in the Russian Federation, probably very much in the same manner as Japan matters for Vladivostok, Finland for St. Petersburg and Karelia, China for Khabarovsk and Irkutsk (conversation of the authors with Anna Karpenko, June 2010).
14 The actual exercise of legal competence by the executive is also dependent on the personality of the leader. President Putin has taken more advantage of this than his predecessors.
15 Until 2006, only five of 32 deputies in Kaliningrad's Duma were elected via party lists. Therefore, rather loose and unstable parliamentary factions independent of political parties existed. It has been the rise of the party United Russia (favorable to the Kremlin and the regional governor) that has led to the domination of parliament by a single party. With the March 2006 elections in Kaliningrad, half of the 40 seats in the Duma were proportionally distributed.
16 In the March 2006 elections, United Russia won this clear majority in the regional Duma through the aforementioned legal changes as well as because of some legitimate popularity, but also through ‘electoral management’ secured through the use of administrative and vast financial resources.
17 While not elaborated in this issue, a discussion on the appropriateness of using a Western academic and political understanding of the concept of ‘civil society’ in the context of post-Soviet Russia and Kaliningrad can be found in McFaul and Treyger (Citation2004, pp. 136–42).
18 On rare occasions that the state has established these channels, such as when they formed the federal Civic Forum in 2001, it was generally those NGOs aligned with federal policy that were admitted.
19 In the economic field, the Russian Constitution of 1993 assigns a number of competencies exclusively to the federal level. Article 71 states that the jurisdiction of the federal government shall include, among other things: determining the basic principles of federal policy and federal programmes in the field of the economy; establishment of the legal framework for a single market; financial, monetary, credit and customs regulation; distribution of currency and guidelines for price policy; federal economic services, including federal banks, the federal budget, federal taxes and levies; federal funds for regional development; and foreign trade relations of the Russian Federation (RF). Article 72 of the Constitution describes the joint jurisdiction of the RF and the oblasts, which includes, among other things: issues pertaining to the possession, use and management of land, minerals, water and other natural resources; protection of the environment and ecological safety; legislation pertaining to the administration and procedures for labor, family and housing; legislation on the sub-surface; coordination of the international and external economic relations of the regions; and compliance with international treaties of the Russian Federation.
20 Exceptions: 2nd round 2002, Albania had more. In the later rounds, (1st and 3rd rounds of 2004, 3rd round of 2005, 1st and 2nd rounds of 2006) Egypt had more. See http://ec.europa.eu/education/programmes/tempus/stat_en.html, accessed 11 December 2007.
21 In 2003, the Russian Federation (RF) was the target of three out of 12 projects; in 2004, RF was the target of only three out of 40 projects; in 2005 (round 1), RF was the target of only four out of 41 projects. For round two of 2005, Russia was the target of seven of 37.