307 SM/0 Information from SM Webpage Start Date: active now, time to time End Date: 30.06.2005 Activated by: 161SM106 Chris Working Frequencies: 26.225-26.505 & 27.450-27.750 MHz QSL MANAGER: 161 SM 032 Marc P.O.Box 5 34330 Zywiec-3 Poland

Kaliningrad - Russia's smallest region is an exclave located 200 miles away from the border of Russia proper. Kaliningrad was a spoil of World War II, ceded from Germany to the Soviet Union at the Potsdam Conference that divided Europe between the allied powers in 1945. The oblast is a wedge-shaped piece of land along the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania, approximately one-half the size of Belgium, 5,830 mi2 (15,100 km2). Its primary and port city is also known as Kaliningrad.

Known as Konigsberg prior to Soviet occupation, the city was founded in 1255 near the mouth of the Pregolya River. The philosopher Immanuel Kant was born in Konigsberg in 1724. The capital of German East Prussia, Konigsberg was the home to a grand Prussian Royal Castle, destroyed along with much of the city in World War II.

Konigsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 after Mikhail Kalinin, formal "leader" of the Soviet Union from 1919 until 1946. Germans living in the oblast were forced out, to be replaced with Soviet citizens.

The ice-free port of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea was home to the Soviet Baltic fleet; during the Cold War 200,000 to 500,000 soldiers were stationed in the region. Today only 25,000 soldiers occupy Kaliningrad, an indicator of the reduction of perceived threat from Baltic neighbors.

The USSR attempted to build a 22-story House of Soviets, "the ugliest building on Russian soil," in Kaliningrad but the structure had been built on the property of the castle. Unfortunately, the castle contained many underground tunnels and the building began to slowly collapse though it still stands, unoccupied.

After the fall of the USSR, neighboring Lithuania and former Soviet republics gained their independence, cutting Kaliningrad off from Russia. While there were early proposals to change the name of Kaliningrad back to Konigsberg, none were successful. Kaliningrad was supposed to develop in the post-Soviet era into a "Hong Kong of the Baltic".

Approximately 400,000 people live in metropolitan Kaliningrad and a total of one million are in the oblast, which is approximately one-fifth forested.