Why is Kaliningrad not part of Lithuania (or Poland)?

[IceAgeComing]

I studied the Baltic States quite a bit when I was at uni (although I focused mostly on post-1991, that involved covering the Soviet occupation); the justification I saw on why they made the Kaliningrad Oblast as an exclave of the RSFSR instead of including it in the Lithuanian SSR was that it further separated the Baltic States from Western rule and although that was purely symbolic; the internal borders of the Soviet Union were purely symbolic things.  You have to remember that western states never formally recognised the Baltic States as part of the Soviet Union, we always legally recognised them as independent states and right through to 1991 in some places you had "ambassadors" representing the three countries.  It wasn't uncommon to do odd things with internal borders to divide people up in odd ways: the borders between the Central Asian republics bear little resemblance to anything that really existed before the mid-1930s; they were just drawn up by the top brass in the USSR to abritrarily divide people up into different nationalities that never really existed: and in many ways still don't.

One reason for the above-mentioned point about Russia or the USSR (I don't know who it would have been at that time, that was the point when both levels were saying very different things) offering to give Kaliningrad back to Germany was that none of the peace documents have ever formally transferred it to Russia; all of the stuff said that it was under "Soviet Administration" which suggests that it might not have been meant as a permanent arrangement, and although Germany don't actively claim the thing they haven't formally renounced any claims to it either.  It'd never go back now (Russia's only non-freezing port so without it Russia would be reliant on Germany and Lithuania for one; the population is almost all Russian now and any transfer of control would be... messy, just look at the Russian minorities in Estonia and Latvia).  It might have worked in 1990; certainly not now though.

[IceAgeComing]

One thing that I remember from that time was that there was a letter congratulating America for... something (I'd like to say that it was a letter to the crew of Apollo 11 for landing on the moon but I can't find it right now, this is something that I last thought about like five years ago) signed by all of the Ambassadors from the major Western nations and Dinsbergs' name was on it representing Latvia, which was really quite interesting.  I actually didn't know that Estonia had a government in exile after the occupation, I'll have to look into that!  In the others what seemed to happen was that they kept a few of the old government around in powerless positions until they could purge them a few months later; plus I imagine that it was a lot harder for them to escape...

I've just remembered that they did make one border change to the Kaliningrad Oblast: before 1949 Klaipeda and the area around it was included with Kaliningrad rather than the Lithuanian SSR.  I imagine that the reason they changed it was again symbolic: it had been part of Lithuania before the war (pre-1918 as Memel it had a very similar history to Kaliningrad in that it was always a part of Prussia and was key tactically as well since the northern-most non-freezing port in Europe: they made it a free city like Gdansk in Versailles and Lithuania ended up invading it in 1921 and incorporated it.  The population was decimated by the war, they mostly settled it with Lithuanians although I'm sure that it still has the highest proportion of Russians in the country); its not like much changed until 1991.  Its also an incredibly nice city near lots of beautiful places (the Curonian Split is fab; the beaches are all nice if you're into that sort of thing plus you still occasionally see little bits of ex-Soviet stuff kicking around on them since the beaches were off-limits during that time to prevent people swimming out and trying to defect on western shipping), its hard to get there since you either have to somehow fly into Palanga, get a train from Vilnius or Kaunas or a bus from Riga airport but I'd recommend it if you're ever nearby for some reason, I spent a month there a few years back and its still the best month of my life and probably the reason why I love the region so much.  If they hadn't done that, then Russia would actually have ended up in quite a powerful strategic position in the region, thinking about it...

[IceAgeComing]

I heard somewhere that Stalin offered Kaliningrad oblast to Lithuanians but they rejected the offer. Also, not well known fact but for very, very short time there were Polish military control over city itself in 1944 or 1945, but I don't remember details.

The former may well have happened but it doesn't really matter, since its not like the Lithuanian SSR were ever truly independent to make a decision like that; especially when Stalin was still alive.  Also any Polish control would have been the Soviet-backed Polish forces rather than the Home Army, which weren't very active in that area.

[IceAgeComing]

I heard somewhere that Stalin offered Kaliningrad oblast to Lithuanians but they rejected the offer. Also, not well known fact but for very, very short time there were Polish military control over city itself in 1944 or 1945, but I don't remember details.

Stalin 'offered' Kaliningrad to the head of the Lithuanian SSR. How he managed to decline the 'friendly fraternal socialist offer' without a bullet in the back of the head is beyond me. The Lithuanians decided that it would too much of a expensive hassle to kick all the ethnic Germans out and resettle the area with Lithuanians and having to repair the war damage. Maybe the Lithuanians replied that Lithuania was so grateful for being 'liberated' by the Russians, that the Russians could have the Kalinigrad as a gift.

The Germans had already fled or been deported. The problem was that the area was being repopulated with ethnic Russians and the leader of the Lithuanian Communists Antanas Sniečkus didn't want a large number of Russians in Lithuania. Russians would have made up more than 30% of the Lithuanian population if the plan had gone through.

Which would have been numbers quite similar to those of the other Baltic States (Latvia was 40%+ Russian in 1990; Estonia was around 30%;  while in Lithuania they were like 8% and below Poles who were a much more entrenched group historically in the Vilnius region) and probably impacted the way that they approached the citizenship question post-independence.  Basically; Lithuania automatically gave Lithuanian citizenship to all Soviet citizens that resided in Lithuania on independence day (plus offered to Lithuanians who lived overseas at the time who came back); while Estonia and Latvia went by the notion that they were independent from 1918 and had been occupied by the USSR in 1940; therefore citizenship was only given to those who could prove links to Latvia before the occupation date which didn't include those (predominantly Russian) migrants under Soviet rule.  Those who weren't citizens became "resident aliens" which gave them residency rights and a passport and basic rights but not political rights (bar in local elections in Estonia I think) unless they went through naturalisation which is still a big problem since most older Russians still aren't citizens - their children are automatically but they learn the national language at school which is the big barrier.  My Russian-Latvian friend is in that position - his parents are technically stateless.

I'd assume that if Lithuania had a larger proportion of Russians in their borders (which if they had the Kaliningrad oblast they wouls) they likely would have gone down the route of more exclusionary citizenship policies.