Poland will stop using the official name of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and henceforth call it by its historical name of Koenigsberg, Warsaw announced on Wednesday.
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The name change to Königsberg (“Krolewiec” in Polish) was recommended by the commission that standardizes foreign names in the Polish language.
“We do not want Russification in Poland, and that is why we have decided to change the name of Kaliningrad and the Kaliningrad region in our native language,” Polish Development Minister Waldemar Buda said.
From now on, official documents and maps will use the historical name of the exclave.
Russia has already rushed to condemn Poland’s decision. “It’s not even Russophobia anymore, these are processes close to madness that are happening in Poland,” Kremlin press representative Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“This does not benefit Poland. These are not simply unfriendly actions, these are hostile actions,” he added.
Köningsberg was founded in 1255 by the Teutonic Order. The city was named in honor of the Bohemian King Ottokar II.
After World War II, the area came under Moscow rule and was renamed Kaliningrad in honor of one of the Bolshevik leaders, Mikhail Kalinin.
Buda pointed out that naming a large border town after Kalinin creates negative emotions for Poles, because this person is jointly responsible for communist crimes, including the murder of Polish officers in Katyn in 1940.
In the spring of 1940, the internal affairs troops of the Soviet Union murdered more than 22,000 Polish army and police officers, doctors, professors, priests and other representatives of the intellectual elite who were captured after the Soviet army invaded Poland on September 17, 1939.
2023-05-10 19:12:02
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