Stagnant testament to Soviet excess will be locked inside New Europe

Poland's entry to the European Union would seal the fate of Kaliningrad as a derelict Russian enclave landlocked inside the borders of prosperous Europe. Once the jewel in the crown of the Teutonic Knights and known for seven centuries as Konigsberg, this scrap of Russia on the Baltic coast will be surrounded by European Union territory when Poland and Lithuania complete their entry next May. Kaliningrad, buffeted by fascism and communism through the 20th century, moved from being the capital of East Prussia to stronghold of the formidable Soviet-days Baltic fleet, 500 miles from Russia proper.

The enclave's economy, once fuelled by its extraordinary wealth of amber, is stagnant. The typical Kaliningrad citizen survives on less than £60 a month. The area has 90 per cent of the world's deposits of amber but its two giant mines are at a near-standstill because two thirds of production is stolen, to reappear in neighbouring countries. Its other economic mainstay was the military, with almost 250,000 troops stationed at the port of Baltisjk. Now home to several thousand bored young Russian sailors, its endless docks are berths for a ghost fleet of rusting warships and unused submarines. In the fields around, thousands of ancient tanks and armoured personnel carriers sit in long-term car parks under camouflage.

Little remains of the German heritage. Its million or more German residents were driven out or slaughtered in a Second World War onslaught that levelled the city, ready for its Stalinist re-creation. The grand Teutonic fortress that stood so long at the centre of Konigsberg has gone, demolished in the Sixties after Soviet authorities denounced it as a "monument to fascism".

In its place, towering over the river, stands the Hall of the Soviets, completed as the Soviet Union collapsed. Its rooms have never been used, the walls and floors have been stripped of all that was saleable and its bare cement walls are crumbling. Abandoned and glaring over the city, it is known unaffectionately to locals as "the monster".

The carpet bombing of residential areas by the RAF in 1944 ensured Soviet planners had a blank canvas. "They didn't care how things looked or fitted together; they just built buildings," says Olga Danilova, who works as a guide for the intrepid German tourists who come looking for Konigsberg. Along the length of the city's main road are unfinished bridges. Designed as flyovers, they sank into the ground and were left unconnected, a series of pointless and ugly arches straddling the traffic. They and the monster will survive, because demolishing them would cost money no one can afford.