Anna Karpenko, social researcher (Kaliningrad)
Identity is an elusive concept and rather difficult to define. It is connected with the positive emotions a person experiences when feeling that they belong to a group. For pronouncedly rational individuals, belonging to a group is questionable altogether, which is why philosophers constantly remind us of the principle of free choice, as if the individual existed in a space defined purely by consciousness and will. In this respect, Immanuel Kant, with his starry heavens and moral law, would hardly have taken even the slightest interest in the subject of identity.
The social sciences are more sensitive to the contexts of human existence.
There are many groups with which an individual identifies.
It is even customary to speak of a hierarchy of identities. One should only not forget that this "ladder" is entirely situational. Leaving aside identification by profession, age, role, subculture and other characteristics, let us focus on regional or national feeling. In Moscow, inside the Russian space, where regional differences or the "capital–periphery" link matter, you will say that you are from Kaliningrad. But in, say, Australia, your priority will be to state that you are Russian: the proverbial "man in the street" is hardly going to be interested in where your "little homeland" is.
Sociological surveys that tell us what percentage of Kaliningraders "feel Russian first of all", "Kaliningraders second" and, say, "Europeans third" can explain and predict very little. First, it is unclear in what context the respondent came to have this "feeling" (was it not at the very moment the question was asked?), and second, what follows from this feeling, and what kind of behaviour should we expect?
That is why, in research terms, it is more interesting to focus on questions such as: in what situations does the theme of "Kaliningrad-ness" come up at all, who formulates the characteristics of this very community and why, what they are contrasted with, and to what extent the proposed characteristics resonate with the group of those counted as "Kaliningraders".
In other words, the important question is who defines identity, why, and how successfully? In which communities is a sense of regional self-awareness developed? Which circumstances of life do these groups influence?
Several key themes can be identified around which there have been attempts to formulate what makes Kaliningraders special. These are attitudes towards the "alien" history and the tangible/intangible heritage, attitudes towards Russian centres of power and authority, and attitudes towards the countries of Europe and the European Union. Depending on the polarity of these characteristics, one or another version of "Kaliningrad identity" takes shape. The definitions range from Soviet unification and attempts to deny any distinctiveness at all (why talk about Kaliningrad when even Saint Petersburg – Leningrad – was being steadily turned into an "ordinary Soviet city") to nostalgia for the phantom of East Prussia, which had vanished even before the Soviet settlers arrived.
Elena Dzyakovich, cultural studies scholar (Moscow)
The word "identity" itself entered first academic and then everyday discourse rapidly and relatively recently. And it has taken a firm place there. It is used by philosophers, psychologists, cultural studies scholars, sociologists, political strategists…
This concept sometimes becomes an object of speculation, sometimes a kind of mental "screen" one can hide behind, and sometimes a kind of template whose components everyone fills with their own content.
Thus the concept of "identity" is currently one of the most sought-after. Having originally emerged within personality psychology and then in social psychology, it came to denote the result of a person's or a group's identification with some social community.
At the same time, the very concept of "identity" often acquires a certain mythologised colouring and is used not in a specific terminological sense but rather in a general cultural one, which sometimes leads to a certain vagueness of meaning.
Leaving "aside" the numerous approaches to defining identity and the debates around this concept, one can say that identity does not exist apart from the human being. And in this sense it is, on the one hand, subjective and personal, and on the other, it is a crucial adaptive mechanism that manifests itself in the most varied forms. It is a way of self-determination, passed through individual experience and multiplied by a historically formed sociocultural foundation.
That is why the study of identity makes it possible to answer the most important questions of human existence: who am I in this world? who are "We" for me, and who are "They"? with whom do I speak the same mental language, one that requires no translation or commentary?
In Russia, with its vast territories and its climatic, sociocultural and mental differences, the question of regional/local identity is particularly acute. Of special interest are territories where local self-identification took shape over different eras.
In these cases it manifests itself both in "official" forms, broadcast by the structures of power, and in "unofficial" forms initiated "from below", and by now it has fairly solid cultural and historical traditions.
It is necessary to study the sociocultural characteristics of the phenomena of territorial identity in order to understand the principles and directions of their transformation, to analyse sociocultural processes in Russia's regions from many angles, and, on a broader scale, to understand the trends and directions in the dynamics of contemporary society's development.
We can therefore say that a Kaliningrad identity certainly exists. It is a special, unique phenomenon, which is both recognised by the region's residents themselves and conveyed through numerous cross-regional stereotypes: "Kaliningrad is Europe in Russia", the span "from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok", "Kaliningrad is a special place", and many others. This phenomenon is rational and emotional at the same time: it needs to be studied, it needs to be understood, felt, loved.
Dmitry Polyansky, anthropologist (Kaliningrad)
Identity is a new term for Russian social sciences and humanities – I would even say a fashionable one. Until the 1990s, Russian humanities scholars used other concepts: self-awareness, social consciousness. Now, as often happens with fashionable terms, the word "identity" is used rather chaotically, mixing different meanings, contexts and levels of analysis.
At the very least, it is always necessary to distinguish between individual and collective identity.
Individual (personal) identity is the integrity, the self-sameness of the personality. It is the result of self-awareness, that is, of being aware of oneself as a separate and distinct reality. Individual identity is experienced as the intuition of the "I".
A special dimension of individual identity is the individual's awareness of belonging to various real and nominal* social groups (I am a Kaliningrader, I am a man, I am a member of the middle class, I am Russian, I am an athlete, I am an atheist, I am heterosexual, etc.).
From this it is easy to move on to the meaning of the concept of "collective (social) identity": it is the collective feeling of different people that they belong to a real social group they share. Collective identity is experienced as the intuition of the "We" (we are Kaliningraders, we are Russians, we are class 10A of school No. ..., etc.).
The formation of collective identities is, on the one hand, connected with the involvement of different people in some common practices, the overcoming of common difficulties, the pursuit of common goals and projects.
On the other hand, it is fostered by encounters with other collective identities, and by the lines of demarcation born of such contact: "we are not them, they are not us". And, of course, one should not underestimate the role of state, church and commercial structures, which may use ideological tools for forming collective identities in their own interests (remember the recent attempt to create "Soviet people").
Identity should, of course, be studied. It is part of the process of self-knowledge. By studying individual identity, we directly come to know ourselves. By studying collective identities, we come to know the society we are part of and study what real social groups it consists of.
In essence, the question of Kaliningraders' collective identity is the question of whether Kaliningraders are a real social group. That Kaliningraders are a significant nominal group, singled out by an objective territorial and administrative criterion, is beyond doubt.
But do Kaliningraders have their own particular interests, goals, values and practices that they are aware of? I would say, cautiously, that they are taking shape.
When there are special living conditions (geographical, historical, economic, political), the people living in those conditions inevitably encounter common difficulties, and therefore common interests and common actions. This takes time, and the people living in Kaliningrad and the region came together here only very recently. And if for someone the existence of a special Kaliningrad reality is not obvious, I have only one answer to that: well, it means the time has not yet come.
Anna Alimpieva, sociologist (Kaliningrad)
In a broad sense, identity can be described as a way of designating one's place in the world and one's uniqueness in relation to others. It is the answer to the questions "who am I?" and "what am I like?". One can speak of identity as an integral characteristic of the personality, or as one of the many ways of defining oneself (I am a professional, I am a joker…). Among the various kinds of identity, what interests me most as a sociologist is social identity: the individual's awareness of belonging to some social group, the result of identifying with it, which entails adopting its values, beliefs and way of life as one's own.
Social identity answers the questions "who am I with?" and "whose group's views, values and preferences do I share?"
Identity needs to be studied above all because of the social problems associated with this phenomenon. To me the following seem extremely important.
First, the (im)possibility of manifesting identity, that is, of displaying it, expressing it outwardly. In modern society the rights of different groups to manifest their own identity are unequal: in some cases expressing identity, making it public, is undesirable or even prohibited by law, while in others it is welcomed in every way. Why is manifesting identity important? Because it is connected with the key question of existence in society – the question of recognition: does society (the state) recognise you, your needs, your interests?
The second important question is that of the nature and instruments of identity formation. Is it the result of the natural course of events (most of us consider ourselves Russians because we were born, grew up and live in Russia), of free choice (thus a person who is unbaptised or baptised Orthodox may, as an adult, convert to Catholicism or Islam), or of artificial formation, of imposition (thus in Soviet times a young person could practically not avoid joining first the Pioneers and then the Komsomol)?
Third, discrimination connected with various kinds of identity, which, alas, is widespread in our society – on ethnic, religious, gender and other grounds – as well as attempts to designate "right" and "wrong" identities.
Finally, the fourth is the problem of interaction and mutual understanding between bearers of different identities.
We are now witnessing such an active setting of some social groups against others, both inside the country (these are "patriots", and those are a "fifth column") and in terms of its relations with the world, in which almost everyone has suddenly become Russia's enemy. This complicates the already difficult question of finding a "common world", a fair social contract. Instead of using identity as a tool for recognising common interests and genuinely uniting people, it is manipulated, stirring up discord and aggression.
Some identities have stronger foundations, others weaker ones. When it comes to place of residence, the commonality of interests is, at least in part, physical in nature and in this sense objective. Kaliningraders are people who live in a small Russian region, geographically separated from the rest of the country and, moreover, one that became part of this country relatively recently. Of course, we have common problems (borders, for example), which cannot fail to affect our sense of self and self-awareness. It would be strange not to notice the geographical, historical and sociocultural specifics of the region, just as it would be strange to deny the existence of a special complex of ideas, feelings and preferences that make up the content of Kaliningrad identity.
Vadim Chaly, philosopher (Kaliningrad)
Identity is a technical concept belonging to the vocabulary of psychologists, sociologists and cultural studies scholars. Outside professional contexts it loses its meaning and is reduced to the same level as "geopolitics", "national interests", "the world behind the scenes" and other words heard all too often in untidy kitchens.
The concept of identity has philosophical roots: ancient ones, known as the "Ship of Theseus paradox"**, and modern ones, connected with reflection on the eras of modernity and postmodernity and the corresponding changes in how people understand themselves.
In an extremely simple, polarised form, the person of modernity is a rational, stable, self-identical subject, while the person of postmodernity is an irrational, changeable and unsteady, random combination of biological and sociocultural circumstances, which in some professional jargons is called identity.
First, identity is studied by specialists who record the properties of human communities and their dynamics, or the properties and changes of personality. This is painstaking descriptive work which, if it meets strict criteria of scientific rigour, allows us to answer the important question "who are we?" more precisely.
Second, identity is something ideologues try to manipulate – those who fancy themselves the "shepherds" of peoples and feel called upon to look after and preserve the human breed, constructing "right" identities and fighting "wrong" ones. Sometimes this fight has ended in concentration camps, so ideologues need to be studied and their zeal tempered.
Third, every thinking person who believes, following Socrates, that only an examined life is worth living, studies in their own way what might be called identity.
The ancient maxim "know thyself" implies putting one's values, goals, beliefs and meanings in order. Even if much in us is accidental, we are still able to throw out what is harmful and superfluous, cultivate what is worthy, and determine what is essential and what is secondary. A person who does not practise the hygiene of their own worldview – what Michel Foucault called "technologies of the self" – needs guardianship and becomes the object of "technologies of power".
One can certainly speak of a Kaliningrad identity, but this should be left to specialists. Far too much of the talk about it comes from people who lack even a minimal conceptual apparatus and do not bother to collect and analyse facts.
Like a hypochondriac amateur armed with a thick medical reference book and capable of making a dozen grave diagnoses on the spot, they produce phantasms that depict fictitious threats and frighten ordinary people for nothing. "Germanisation", "separatism" – all this is akin to talk of reptilians and flying saucers, and an academic degree held by those who engage in it is an aggravating circumstance.
Of course, Kaliningrad identity does have certain peculiarities. For example, the proverbial "Kaliningrader" is a witness to the collapse of no fewer than two utopian ideologies of modernity: the material environment preserves traces of the collapse of someone else's National Socialist project, the intangible one – the emptiness left after the collapse of the Soviet project, which was their own. The result of this experience should, in principle, be a particularly deep distrust of "great ideas" and ideologies. Such distrust constitutes the essence of the already mentioned "postmodern era", so the "Kaliningrader" turns out to be rather good material for studying this large and popular topic.
__________
* A nominal group is a set of people artificially singled out by a researcher according to some characteristic. Such a group is usually singled out for accounting purposes; in reality, these people do not interact with one another. (For example: pizza lovers, middle-aged people.) A real group is a set of people who regularly interact with one another on the basis of common interests and goals of which they are aware. (For example: a school class, a work team, a party, a church congregation.)
** The "Ship of Theseus paradox" goes like this: "If all the component parts of an original object have been replaced, does the object remain the same object?"
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
