ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the two examples: the particular case of the Kaliningrad Region as Russian exclave surrounded by and EU external border, and then the border between Russia and the Baltic States. Under the Soviet Union, Kaliningrad was one of the Soviet regions, bordering the Baltic Socialist Soviet Republics Latvia and Lithuania to the north and east, and communist Poland, in the south and west. The physical separateness of the region from Russia proper was therefore of little practical relevance. For Kaliningrad's Russian population as a whole, this dual legacy makes for a difficult, and delicate, balancing and negotiating act between following economic necessities in a now market-based economy, and explaining and legitimising its relationship to a place that has become its new home. Adopting the concept of 'virtual regionality' in cross-border linkages may offer the possibility of reducing the 'temperature' in such international contestations and allow greater focus on the local, pragmatic dimensions of projects.
