The Commission for Standardization of Geographical Names outside Poland recommended that the name Krulewiec be used for the Russian city of Kaliningrad. On this subject said on the commission’s website.
“For the city with the Russian name Kaliningrad, only the Polish name Krulevets is recommended and it is not recommended to use the name Kaliningrad in Polish,” the report said.
It is recommended to call the Kaliningrad region in Polish Krulevetskaya. The Naming Standardization Commission made a corresponding decision at a meeting on April 12, and on May 9 it came into effect.
The department noted that Kaliningrad “is known in Poland by the traditional name of Krulewiec”.
“Each country has the right to use in its language the traditional names that make up its cultural heritage, and cannot be forced to use in its language names that are unacceptable to it,” the commission’s decision states.
The current name of Kaliningrad in Poland is considered “artificial, not being associated with either the city or the region”. Soviet figure Mikhail Kalinin, the commission calls one of those responsible for the decision on the mass execution of Poles in Katyn. Therefore, naming “a large town near the Polish border” <…> has an emotional and negative character in Poland,” the report said.
Among the reasons that prompted Warsaw to “take a different look at the problem of imposed names”, the military operation in Ukraine was also indicated.
At the April meeting, the Commission for Standardization of Geographical Names outside Poland also made changes to the names of some objects in Belarus and Ukraine. The Polish language has its own names for several cities in Europe – Monachium (Munich), Mediolan (Milan), Lipsk (Leipzig).
The reaction of the Kremlin and the Kaliningrad authorities
Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said the Polish authorities’ recommendation to call Kaliningrad Krulevets is “not even Russophobia, but borderline madness processes.”
According to Peskov, Poland “slips from time to time into this madness of its hatred of Russians”. “This repeated itself for many centuries, from the 16th to the 17th century and even before. It does not bring anything good for Poland and the Poles,” the Kremlin spokesman said (quoted by CASS ).
The press secretary to the Kaliningrad region governor, Dmitry Lyskov, called the decision of the Polish commission for the standardization of names “insinuations”.
“Our city has a name, the official toponym is Kaliningrad. Everything else is just implied. With the same success we can call Gdansk – Danzig, and the Republic of Poland – the Kingdom of Poland. But we adhere to the official toponyms, which we demand from others,” said Lyskov RBC.
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