eetinBelgië wrote:

Kaliningrad: from Russian relic to Baltic boom town

Once famous for brutalist Soviet architecture and soaring Aids rates,
this tiny enclave is emerging as Putin's answer to Hong Kong
Stephen Castle reports
Published: 23 March 2006

Once it was a home of philosophy, a European capital and a centre of
Baltic prosperity. These days those who have heard of Kaliningrad
associate it with drugs, prostitution and the Russian Aids epidemic.

Jutting out into the Baltic, the region of Kaliningrad is an accident
of history, a part of Russia now literally cut off from the rest of the
motherland by Lithuanian territory. But this small, Russian fifth
column inside an expanding EU is mounting a surprise comeback. Buoyed
by something of an economic boom, the region's extrovert, 42-year-old
governor, Georgy Boos, has ambitious plans to turn the enclave into the
Hong Kong of the Baltic. He also wants to transform the city once known
as Königsberg into one of Europe's least likely tourist destinations.

snip

All is fantasy unless Russia is willing to drop it's strong objection to
tourism and outside commercial interests. Hong Kong was strong
precisely because it was a free outpost on the edge of a totalitarian
empire.

A totalitarian outpost on the edge of a free empire has no purpose.