Kaliningrad - a city worth revisiting

摘要

Fourteen years ago I went to Kaliningrad to receive an honorary degree from the Kaliningrad State Technical University (KSTU). It was soon after the collapse of the Soviet economic and political system. The old Hanseatic city of Koenigsberg, devastated by bombs, was renamed Kaliningrad when, after WWII, East Prussia was divided between USSR and Poland. The Soviet administration replaced the ruins with many featureless but enormous buildings. Although a major commercial port and fishing fleet base, myimpression of Kaliningrad at that time was of a drab, unclean and neglected city. In May, KSTU invited me to deliver a plenary lecture on a conference dedicated to the 85th birthday of the late Prof AL Fridman, who for over 30 years served as its Chairof Commercial Fisheries, and to the 95th anniversary of the establishment by Prof Fl Baranov, of the fishing technology institute at the Moscow VNIRO (the Soviet equivalent to the American NOAA). The institute was later moved to Kaliningrad to develop into the KSTU, much through Fridman's efforts.