Paul Holtom
Researcher, Centre for Border Studies, The University of Glamorgan, Wales
The disintegration of the former Soviet bloc in Central and Eastern Europe was accompanied by the opening of borders between the states of the region, making travel between the states of the former Soviet bloc much easier than it had been before. This rapidly acquired an immense practical and economic significance for ordinary people, as crossing borders became a vital means of cushioning the shocks of economic transition.2
The idea that borders create economic opportunities to be exploited by those who are able to cross them regularly, and to take advantage of differences in the supply, demand and price of various goods and services existing on either side of the border, is a basic tenet of Border Studies.3 The practice of small-scale cross border trading has been acknowledged by a number of researchers as a strategy employed by inhabitants of Europe’s post-socialist space as a means of cushioning the shocks of economic transition.4 Due to the fact that a number of formerly Communist states and Soviet Republics opted to join the EU, we have witnessed in recent years a number of changes being made with regard to border regimes in Central and Eastern Europe that will have a significant impact upon the ability of individuals to move across inter-state borders in the region.
It is not only those states which joined the EU in May 2004, that have spent the past few years implementing changes to the rules and procedures for border crossings. The bi-lateral nature of border management and visa policies means that both sides of the border have had to change their rules and procedures for border crossings. For example, while the border management and visa policies of new EU members such as Lithuania and Poland are expected to be increasingly compatible with the regulations employed in Germany or Italy, neighbouring states such as Belarus, Russia and Ukraine have also had to make changes in these policy areas. Therefore, visas will now be required for citizens of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to visit Poland and Lithuania, and vice versa, where before numerous exemptions and special dispensations had enabled visa-free travel for the citizens of these states. Yet, while Poland and Lithuania negotiated the conditions and prices for visas bi-laterally with Belarus, Russia and Ukraine respectively, there are question marks hanging over the duration of these new regulations. For some analysts, these new rules, which were adopted in 2003, are likely to be short-term transitional arrangements, with a ‘sharper shock’ due after the new EU members implement all aspects of the Schengen acquis.5
The importance and necessity of these changes has not been the subject of a great deal of constructive criticism from within the applicant states, although it does exist,6 and for much of the accession period changes to border management and visa policies were treated more or less as a fait accompli. From the other side of the border, Belorussian, Russian and Ukrainian politicians and analysts have described the changes as leading to a ‘paper curtain’ and a ‘new dividing line in Europe’. These descriptions have been particularly prominent in Russian discourses on the policies of the EU and its new members towards the Russian region of Kaliningrad, and were particularly virulent in 2002 during the Russian–EU discussions on transit access between Kaliningrad and other regions of the Russian Federation after the 2004 enlargement of the EU. It was during this period that one could observe Lithuanian politicians and analysts sympathising with the inhabitants of Kaliningrad and politicians in Moscow as they explained that they did not wish to see the rules for border crossings significantly changed but had to ‘obey Brussels’, whilst also participating in discourses calling for stricter border controls to combat ‘soft security’ threats emanating from ‘the East’ and havens of crime and social ills such as Kaliningrad. These seemingly contradictory discourses have been squared by many of the new members of the EU by arguing that they wish to promote and facilitate ‘legitimate’ cross border activities and visits, and prevent ‘illegal’ cross border activities and visits, such as illegal immigration, trafficking in persons, drugs and dangerous materials.
While for some, however, the singling out of Kaliningrad as home to all these threats is unfair since other areas on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea and western regions of the Russian Federation share similar concerns to Kaliningrad, no region other than Kaliningrad could argue that it will be ‘isolated’ or ‘quarantined’ from other parts of its home state or neighbours as a result of changes in border and visa requirements, even if this is the result of more psychological rather than practical causes. After all, in contrast to other parts of the Russian Federation, inhabitants of Kaliningrad were able to enjoy visa-free travel to Lithuania until 2003, while their compatriots in other Russian regions were not granted such unrestricted access to their EU aspirant neighbours. In some respects, inhabitants of Kaliningrad continue to enjoy certain privileges, such as free multiple entry visas to Poland, which their compatriots do not enjoy. Whether Kaliningrad will continue to enjoy such exemptions in the future remains to be seen.
This paper questions the ‘black and white’ nature of the treatment of border crossings between Lithuania/Poland and Kaliningrad with reference to the complex nature of the cross-border shuttle trade in this sub-region. The first part of this paper therefore proposes a tentative typology of those involved in ‘shuttle trading’ practices in the Kaliningrad–Lithuania and Kaliningrad-Poland border regions. Interactions between those for whom ‘shuttle trading’ is a survival or coping strategy and transnational organised crime concerns and smuggling rings will also be raised here. These connections require further investigations before satisfactory policy options can be offered, and therefore the second part of this paper, which discusses possible options regarding the issue of cross-border shuttle trading from the perspective of the traders and the state authorities, is intended merely as a starting point based upon an analysis of open source materials.
A Typology of Shuttle Traders
This typology has been developed from studies of small-scale cross-border traders carried out in Central and Eastern Europe, and from anecdotal evidence. This paper takes the view that shuttle traders are not a single homogenous group, but can be divided into types according to the goods that they carry across the border. The problem remains that the typology proposed here presents ‘ideal’ types, and that an individual may move between these types, depending on such factors as opportunities, the supply of and demand for certain goods, or price differences. Nevertheless, the categories that will be discussed here are:
1. ‘Primitive entrepreneurs’;
2. Kontrabandisty (smugglers); and
3. Traffickers.
Primitive entrepreneurs
Studies conducted along the Polish-Ukrainian/ Belarusian borders have argued that, after 1993, it became profitable for ‘primitive entrepreneurs’ from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to purchase consumer goods in Poland, ranging from textiles to electronic equipment, and then to sell these goods back in their home markets. The vast number of traders involved gave rise to bazaars or open-air markets along Poland’s eastern border and in Warsaw, where consumer goods were purchased, before the traders returned home to sell these goods.
It has been suggested that this practice is carried out by a diverse spectrum of post-communist Europe’s population: uneducated and educated, urban and rural, residing in the border regions and in capital cities, male and female, employed and unemployed. It is possible, however, to roughly divide them into two broad groups.
The first comprises people who engage in shuttle trading to supplement their income. This group includes state employees, such as teachers, who may participate in cross-border activities weekly, monthly, or only a few times a year. This trade is primarily a way of supplementing a main income; practitioners enjoy their jobs, but the material benefits they accrue from them are deemed insufficient to meet basic needs, or more consumer wants.7
The second comprises professional traders or ‘ants’. These are people who have no other job but small-scale cross-border trade. To quote Bartosz Cichocki, in Poland ‘ant trade … is the phenomenon of repeated carrying of relatively small amounts of goods by the same persons in order to sell them at a profit on the other side of the border’.8 ‘Ants’ can make up to ten border crossings in one day.9 On the one hand, this practice may be ‘beneficial for people in solving their vital material problems’ and important in ‘the survival strategy of many households’.10 On the other hand, one could argue that people undertake ‘international income-seeking endeavours not merely to survive economically but to elevate considerably their own and their families’ socio-economic status at home, and in the perceptions of the migrants themselves and their local communities’.11
‘Ants’ rely upon informal personal networks. Relationships based on mutual trust, rather than institutionalised forms, are developed with border guards and wholesalers on both sides of the border. The traders are classed as working within the ‘grey’ economy because they operate in the margins between the legal and illegal economies. For example, if Kaliningraders sell their goods without either the status of a ‘physical person’ (fizicheskoe litso – the right to trade as an individual) or ‘juridical person’ (yuridicheskoe litso – the right to trade as a company), then they are operating illegally.12
Kontrabandisty
The second group – Kontrabandisty or smugglers – share many of the features of the ‘ants’. They cross the border often, make their profits from differences in prices and demand across the border and rely upon a network of informal relations with friends, family, border guards and wholesalers. However, unlike the ‘primitive entrepreneurs’, the goods they trade are commodities that are cheaper in the CIS than in Poland or Lithuania – for example, alcohol, cigarettes, amber and petrol. Profits are made by not declaring the amount being carried across the border, and therefore not paying the duties that importing such quantities should carry. Trade in these goods between Kaliningrad and Lithuania and Kaliningrad and Poland is considered to be particularly lucrative.
Due to the fact that ‘ants’ are unlikely to travel across the border empty-handed, one could assume that small-scale cross-border traders are ‘ant-traders’ from Poland and Lithuania to Kaliningrad, and Kontrabandisty from Kaliningrad to Lithuania and Poland . This needs further exploration, and should therefore be treated as speculation based upon limited and anecdotal evidence. However, the distinction between primitive entrepreneurs and Kontrabandisty is pertinent when considering the following group.
Traffickers
It is perhaps incorrect to include traffickers in a typology of shuttle traders, since the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people is ascribed to transnational organised crime groups. It is deemed necessary to include them here, however, as they are one of the main reasons for imposing stricter regulations on cross-border movements between Kaliningrad and its new EU neighbours, and are also potentially linked to the two groups described above. In both the Russian and international media, Kaliningrad has gained a reputation as a transit route for traffickers.
Unlike the two groups mentioned above, those involved in the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people are not part of Kaliningrad’s grey trans-border economy. However, there are strong suspicions that organised crime groups are involved in the lucrative Kontrabandisty trade. For example, it has been alleged that Kaliningrad’s so-called ‘tobacco Mafia’ has made millions of dollars from importing and exporting cigarettes duty-free. Recent findings suggest that along with the Republics of Latvia and Lithuania, Kaliningrad serves as one of the main transit points for large-scale international tobacco smuggling.13 Kaliningrad’s tobacco Mafia has received considerable attention in the Russian media, and also from the Federal Security Service (FSB). This is believed to be an area where organised crime groups operate on an international, rather than simply trans-border, scale. They are also likely to be involved in the wholesale purchasing of small-scale Kontrabandisty trading. Therefore, the second group of shuttle traders considered in this paper are probably associated with transnational organised crime groups, even if they are small-scale smugglers rather than large-scale traffickers.
Crime
Traffickers are not alone in having a criminal interest in shuttle trading. Shuttle traders may also be seen as easy targets by powerful individuals. Three reasons can be given for this. First, traders carry cash. Second, they operate on a fine line between the legal and illegal economies. This is connected to the third reason: shuttle traders do not rely on institutionalised forms of protection because they have little trust in the state authorities, preferring personal arrangements. Border guards may not offer protection from transnational organised crime groups, but they are believed to take their cut from turning a blind eye to ‘grey’ economic activities. The more profitable shuttle trading is, the more tempting a target shuttle traders become for criminal organisations and individuals.
Solutions
The typology described here has distinguished between the different groups based upon the goods being traded, but it is likely that the paths of these different groups cross in the course of their trading activities. However, the border regime solutions that are proposed in this section are explicitly guided by a desire to prevent the first two groups from becoming too embroiled and dependent upon the last group; in other words, from becoming too ‘criminalised’. The preferred option is therefore to assist with transferring shuttle traders into the legitimate economy. This, of course, will require more than changes in border management procedures. The three options presented below are therefore:
1. A ‘shuttle trader-friendly’ approach;
2. Making the border ‘hard’; or
3. Transforming the shadow cross-border economy into a more transparent cross-border economy.
These possible options acknowledge that although changes have recently been introduced for crossing the Kaliningrad-Lithuania/Poland borders due to the accession conditions on Lithuania and Poland, they have not yet significantly changed the make-up of those crossing the borders. Shuttle-traders continue to represent a considerable percentage of those crossing the borders. The challenge that has been set for the second half of this paper therefore, is to discuss a number of possible strategies for dealing with shuttle-traders between now and the entry of Lithuania and Poland into the Schengen area (expected in 2006).
A shuttle trader-friendly approach
As long as there are differences in price, and there is a supply of goods and a demand for them on opposite sides of the border, then shuttle trading will continue to provide people in depressed border regions with an income and a means of satisfying their basic needs, or consumer wants. Indeed, buying cheaper goods across the border is an everyday event for those living at the national boundaries within the EU. Could this everyday event be extended to the future EU–Russian border regions?
How could this policy be implemented, while at the same time reducing the impact of ‘ants’ on other forms of border crossing? One solution would be to separate small-scale cross-border trade from other cross-border movements. This would necessitate changes in border infrastructure and, potentially, an increase in the number of crossing-points. An average of 23,000 crossings were made at the Polish–Kaliningrad border each day in 2001, five times the capacity of the current infrastructure. But improvements also have to be coordinated to ensure that both Kaliningrad and Lithuanian/Polish capacities are compatible, otherwise bottlenecks will occur. For example, the Lithuanian border post of Kibartai can handle 2,100 vehicle crossings per day, thanks to EU Phare funds. This is well above the capacity of the corresponding border post on the Kaliningrad side at Chernyshevskoe.
Of course, giving access to a special channel - alongside the red and green channels - to shuttle traders means that the state authorities would have to officially acknowledge, and in effect legitimise, shuttle trading. State authorities argue that such trade should not be allowed to continue. There are three reasons for this.
The first concerns loss of tax and customs duties on goods purchased across the border. For example, in the Lithuanian border town of Kibartai, restrictions were placed on the movement of people across the border in June 2001, when the local authorities stated that people who crossed the border more than four times a month to buy food and drink in Kaliningrad were damaging the local economy by depriving the budget of revenue. According to the vice-mayor of the Vilkavišskis region, Algimantas Greimas, ‘I agree that … such measures … are against the right of free [cross-border] movement. However, the region cannot collect enough money to pay for benefits. This is why we decided to regulate [this movement]’.14
Secondly, small-scale cross-border trading may cause problems for Kaliningrad’s local enterprises in hiring and retaining workers. For example, according to one group of economists:
The grey economy, especially the highly organised motor vehicle trade, in which Kaliningrad acts as an entrepôt between Western Europe and the Russian mainland, is clearly a source of substantial income for many people. The earnings in this field were cited by industrial managers, in interviews, as making it difficult for them to attract and retain good staff.15
Thirdly, small-scale cross-border traders are accused of corrupting state agents. For example, before 1 October 2003, shuttle traders had to carry a so-called ‘tourist voucher’ to enable them to cross the Polish-Kaliningrad border. These vouchers were supposed to prove that the crossing would include an overnight stay. But anecdotal evidence suggests that, not only did the voucher system fail to prevent shuttle traders from crossing the border several times a day, but it also meant that there was a degree of complicity among border guards in the traders’ activities. State agents such as border guards also gain from shuttle trade through bribes. This has implications for the next option proposed here, which is to implement border controls more strictly.
Making the Border ‘Hard’
Border controls to regulate the movement of shuttle traders have existed since the early 1990s, but they have not been strictly adhered to by state agents. What would have happened if border guards had strictly enforced the tourist voucher system? Or if more searches were made of those crossing the border, and if those caught carrying more than their personal allowance of alcohol or cigarettes, for example, were prosecuted? What would happen if the shuttle traders operating without a licence were charged? The value of contraband seized at the Kaliningrad-Lithuania and Kaliningrad–Poland borders has increased in recent years, and a number of organised crime groups has been broken up. But it is not clear that this demonstrates that the borders have become ‘harder’, and that measures to combat smuggling and trafficking have become more effective.
As noted in the opening section of this paper, border and visa arrangements have changed for those wishing to cross the borders between Kaliningrad and Lithuania and Poland. Since 1 July 2003, Lithuanians have required visas to visit Kaliningrad and Kaliningraders have required visas to visit Lithuania, with a similar set of arrangements in place between Poland and Kaliningrad since 1 October 2003. Accounts from border crossing points on both the Lithuanian–Kaliningrad and Polish-Kaliningrad reported that there had been a significant decrease in the number of crossings made for the first couple of weeks after the introduction of these changes, when compared with the weeks preceding the changes. However, by the end of the new border regime’s first month, border crossing figures were about the same as those of the pre-visa days, and reports were being published which suggested that very little had changed in terms of who was crossing the border – although consulates on both sides of the border were apparently surrounded by queues of people waiting for their visas.16 In other words, the visas did not prevent ‘shuttle-traders’ from trying to cross the border, even if they could lose their visa and be banned from applying for another visa for a year or more. It is for this reason that criticism has been made of the EU Commission’s proposals for establishing a special regime and permits for local border traffic at the enlarged EU’s external border.17
But, increasing restrictions and controls at the border would also mean that the risks accompanying cross-border trading, and therefore prices, would also increase. It is safe to assume that restrictions at border crossings will encourage the use of alternative transit routes, rather than stop such crossings altogether. It has been suggested that increasing restrictions and controls on Kaliningrad’s land borders could drive smugglers and traffickers out to sea. According to one report, Kaliningrad’s border guards and police service are already preparing themselves to tackle marine-borne smuggling, with a number of drug smugglers apparently already attempting to establish smuggling sea routes.18 This has also been the result elsewhere in the world where land borders have become more strictly policed, such as between Gibraltar and Spain. Border guards in Kaliningrad and Lithuania have even warned that the River Neman, especially when frozen, serves as an unofficial border crossing.19 Therefore, it is necessary to encourage more effective cooperation to alleviate some of the problems facing the already-stretched border services that patrol these areas. Practical cooperation between the EU and Russian law-enforcement and customs and border guards should attack this problem more vigorously, thereby meeting the declarations of Russian-EU joint statements on ‘soft security’ and the Northern Dimension Action Plan. In this regard, Kaliningrad could perhaps serve as a pilot region for cooperation in this sphere.
Transform the shadow cross-border economy into a more transparent cross-border economy
Several Western academics have argued that Schengen-style borders are ineffective at combating transnational security concerns;20 the European Commission’s insistence that there be no derogation from the Schengen system is therefore fallacious. Schengen is politically and economically cheaper than effective prevention, which takes place beyond, not at, the EU’s eastern border. The same could be said about small-scale cross-border trading. The solution needs to be found beyond the border crossing posts.21
According to official figures, average Lithuanian wages are about three times higher22 than in Kaliningrad, and in Poland they are about six times higher. Of course, there are large wage differentials between Kaliningrad city and the oblast’s smaller cities and rural areas. And while wages in Poland’s north-eastern regions and in western regions of Lithuania are probably higher than in Kaliningrad’s bordering regions, they are not as high as their respective average national wages. Therefore, according to the mayor of the Polish-Kaliningrad borderland town of Goldap, Marek Miros, ‘many local residents … earn extra zlotys smuggling alcohol, petrol or cigarettes from Russia’s nearby Kaliningrad region making the border … Goldap’s biggest industry’.23 The picture is similar in the Lithuanian border town of Kibartai.24 Like the Goldap region, high unemployment, and the differences in prices of goods such as alcohol, cigarettes and petrol, make small-scale cross-border trading worthwhile. The same can also be said about Kaliningrad’s border areas.
If shuttle trading is to be curbed or its participants converted from the shadow economy to the legitimate economy, alternative means of employment need to be available and supported. Therefore, development plans for Kaliningrad must also consider areas outside Kaliningrad city and the coastal towns. It has been claimed that there is zero unemployment in the Kaliningrad border town of Sovetsk. In fact, ‘every day the population … increases by several thousand thanks to Lithuanian citizens who every morning cross the Koroleva Luiza bridge on their way to work in the town’.25 According to this report, 12 Lithuanian-financed and -run factories have opened in Sovetsk since 2000, providing employment to the people of the town and of the neighbouring Lithuanian regions. For optimists, the case of Sovetsk could be a model for the development of cross-border business cooperation and investment between EU and Russian border regions, and is supported in Tacis cross-border cooperation declarations and Russian development proposals for the oblast. There is anecdotal evidence that shuttle trading allows its practitioners to develop supplier networks and accumulate enough capital to set up legitimate small and medium-sized enterprises.
However, one could argue that shuttle traders are not setting up such enterprises because:
• they are not involved in trading with the aim of doing so;
• the shadow trans-border economy is evidence of a continuing ‘beat-the-system’ mentality; and
• Soviet-style bureaucracy continues to pose serious problems for those desiring to set-up a small or medium-sized enterprise. As a letter in a popular Kaliningrad daily put it, ‘any entrepreneur … is a hero, and deserves to be given the “Order for the Struggle against Bureaucracy”’.26
Conclusion
A number of important questions relating to shuttle trading still require answers.
• Why are people involved in shuttle trading? Is it a survival strategy, or to meet a desire for consumer goods?
• What will be the socio-economic impact of erecting a ‘harder’ border between Kaliningrad and its neighbours?
• Is it possible to find grounds and mechanisms for more effective cross-border cooperation between EU and Russian authorities in combating transnational organised crime?
• Can a balance of threat and inducement be found to convert the shadow cross-border economy into a more transparent cross-border economy?
This paper has described the phenomenon of shuttle trading along the enlarged EU-Russian border, and attempted to locate the Kaliningrad–Poland–Lithuania cases into the broader body of work on this topic. The complexity and inter-relatedness of ‘grey’ and ‘criminal’ cross-border trading has also been discussed, although only the surface has been scratched here. A more in-depth study of the borderland’s household survival and coping strategies, employing and informed by quantitative and qualitative approaches, is needed before more concrete conclusions can be made on this subject.
However, it is obvious that the preferred solution for dealing with shuttle-trading in the borderlands of the EU and Russia requires some wide-ranging changes in individual habits and social practices, in relations between individuals and the state and society, in the business climate and in the economic development of the borderlands. The best way of preventing the grey trans-border economy from becoming criminalised is to deal with the increasing discrepancy in prices and living standards between the opposite sides of the border, and to provide opportunities to move from the grey economy to legitimate practices. It remains to be seen whether these changes can be made in time to improve the political climate in Kaliningrad.
Footnotes
1 This paper draws upon a number of points made in: Paul Holtom, ‘Small-Scale Cross-Border Trading in Kaliningrad’s Borderlands’, in Hanne-M. Birckenbach and Christian Wellmann (eds.), The Kaliningrad Challenge: Options and Recommendations (Münster/ Hamburg/Berlin/London: LIT Verlag, 2003), pp. 152-68.
2 Judy Batt, ‘Introduction’, in Bartosz Cichocki (ed.), Kaliningrad in Europe (A Study commissioned by the Council of Europe, 2003), p. 7.
3 For example, see: Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (Oxford: Berg, 1999), p. 87.
4 See for example, Krystna Iglicka, ‘The Economics of Petty Trade on the Eastern Polish Border’, in Krystna Iglicka and Keith Sword (eds), The Challenge of East-West Migration for Poland (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 120-44; Krystyna Iglicka, ‘Shuttling from the Former Soviet Union to Poland: From "Primitive Mobility" to Migration’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 27, no. 3, 2001,pp. 505-18; Ewa Morawska, ‘The Malleable Homo Sovieticus: Transnational Entrepreneurs in Post-Communist East Central Europe’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 32, 1999, p. 359-78; Claire Wallace et al., ‘Investing in Social Capital: The Case of Small-Scale, Cross-Border Traders in Post-Communist Central Europe’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 23, no. 4, 1999, p. 751-69.
5 For example, see the analysis provided by: Bartosz Cichocki, ‘The Consequences of EU Enlargement for the Movement of People Across Kaliningrad’s Borders’, in Bartosz Cichocki (ed.), Kaliningrad in Europe (A Study commissioned by the Council of Europe, 2003), p. 85-102.
6 The Stefan Batory Foundation’s Policy Papers ‘On the Future of Europe’ are an important exception in this regard, with their focus on Poland’s/the EU’s eastern border particularly illuminating. These papers are available on line at: <http://www.batory.org.pl/ english/pub/index.htm>
7 Morawska, ‘The Malleable Homo Sovieticus’, p. 363; Wallace et al., ‘Investing in Social Capital’, p. 758.
8 Bartosz Cichocki et al., ‘The Kaliningrad Oblast in the Context of EU Enlargement’, CES Studies (Warsaw: Centre for Eastern Studies), no. 2, 2001, p. 56.
9 Morawska, ‘The Malleable Homo Sovieticus’, p. 363.
10 Iglicka, ‘The Economics of Petty Trade’, p. 121.
11 Morawska, ‘The Malleable Homo Sovieticus’, p. 362.
12 Caroline Humphrey, ‘Traders, "Disorder", and Citizenship Regimes in Provincial Russia’, in Michael Buraway and Katherine Verdery (eds), Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), pp. 20-52.
13 For more information, see: The Financial Times, 20 January 2004; Lietuvos Rytas (Lithuania), 24 July 2003; Telegraf (Latvia), 3 June 2003.
14 Lietuvos Rytas (Russian-language version), 8-15 June 2001.
15 Philip Hanson et al., ‘Kaliningrad and Primorskiy Krai’, in Philip Hanson and Michael Bradshaw (eds), Regional Economic Change in Russia (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2000), p. 243.
16 The Financial Times, 20 January 2004.
17 For example by the analyst Bartosz Cichocki, a contributor to this volume.
18 BBC Monitoring Service, 20 October 2003.
19 Kaskad, 6 February 2001.
20 Heather Grabbe, ‘The Sharp Edges of Europe: Extending Schengen Eastwards’, International Affairs, vol. 76, no. 3, 2000, pp. 519-36; Jan Zielonka, ‘How New Enlarged Borders will Reshape the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 39, no. 3, 2001, pp. 507-36.
21 Paul Holtom, ‘Measures to Address Some of the Issues Concerning the Kaliningrad Oblast and Its Inhabitants’, in Bartosz Cichocki (ed.), Kaliningrad in Europe (A Study commissioned by the Council of Europe, 2003), p. 115-38.
22 Cichocki et al., ‘The Kaliningrad Oblast in the Context of EU Enlargement’, p. 56.
23 Quoted in The Financial Times, 11 April 2001.
24 Lyndelle D. Fairlie, ‘Kaliningrad Borders in Regional Context’, in Lyndelle D. Fairlie and Alexander Sergounin (eds), Are Borders Barriers? EU Enlargement and the Russian Region of Kaliningrad (Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2001), p. 44.
25 RTR, 31 August 2002.
26 Kaliningradskaya pravda, 21 February 2001. 
