Klaipėda town and municipality

The pace
Klaipėda (pronounced: [ˈkɫɐɪˑpʲeːd̪ɐ] ( listen)), historically also known as Memel, is a city in Lithuania on the Baltic Sea coast. It is the third largest city in Lithuania and the capital of Klaipėda County.

The city has a complex recorded history, partially due to the combined regional importance of the usually ice-free Port of Klaipėda at the mouth of the Akmena-Danė River. It was controlled by successive German states until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. As a result of the 1923 Klaipėda Revolt it was added to Lithuania and has remained with Lithuania to this day, except for the period between 1939 and 1945 when it returned to the Third Reich following the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania.

The population shrank from 207,100 in 1992 to 157,350 in 2014. Popular seaside resorts found close to Klaipėda are Nida to the south on the Curonian Spit, and Palanga to the north.

History
During World War II, from the end of 1944 into 1945, as Allied victory appeared imminent, the inhabitants fled as the fighting drew nearer. The nearly empty city was captured by the Soviet Red Army on 28 January 1945 with only about 50 remaining people. After the war the Memel Territory was incorporated into the Lithuanian SSR, marking the start of a new epoch in the history of the city.

The Soviets transformed Klaipėda, the foremost ice-free port in the Eastern Baltic, into the largest piscatorial-marine base in the European USSR. A gigantic shipyard, dockyards, and a fishing port were constructed. Subsequently, by the end of 1959, the population of the city had doubled its pre-war population, and by 1989 there were 203,000 inhabitants. In the aftermath of World War II almost all the new residents came to Klaipėda from Lithuania, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Initially the Russian-speakers dominated local government in the city, but after the death of Joseph Stalin, more people came to the city from the rest of Lithuania than from other Soviet republics and oblasts; Lithuanians then became its major ethnic group. Among Lithuanian cities with a population greater than 100,000, however, Klaipėda has the highest percentage of people whose native language is Russian.

Until the 1970s, Klaipėda was only important to the USSR for its economy, while cultural and religious activity was minimal and restricted. The developers of a Roman Catholic church (Maria, Queen of Peace, constructed 1957–1962) were arrested. The city began to develop cultural activities in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the introduction of the Sea Festival cultural tradition, where thousands of people come to celebrate from all over the country. Based on the Pedagogical University of Šiauliai and the National Conservatory of Lithuania in Klaipėda, the University of Klaipėda was established in 1991. Klaipėda is now the home of a bilingual German-Lithuanian institution, the Hermann-Sudermann-Schule, as well as an English-language University, LCC International University.

In 2014 Klaipėda was visited 64 times by cruise ships, surpassing the Latvian capital, Riga, for the first time.

Also see

 * Chernyakhovsk
 * Cold War
 * Port of Klaipėda
 * City of Kaliningrad
 * Chernyakhovsk
 * Port of Klaipėda
 * Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University
 * Cold War
 * Kaliningrad Chkalovsk naval air base.
 * Baltic Way
 * Baltics are Waking Up
 * Singing Revolution
 * Baltiysk
 * Chernyakhovsk
 * Baltiysk
 * Bagrationovsky District of Kaliningrad Oblast
 * City of Kaliningrad
 * Chernyakhovsky District
 * Klaipėda district municipality
 * Chekhovo, Kaliningrad Oblast
 * Yuzhnyy Airport, Kaliningrad
 * Memel Territory
 * Klaipėda district municipality
 * Klaipėda County
 * City of Kaliningrad
 * Chekhovo, Kaliningrad Oblast
 * The Tallinn TV Tower (Tallinna teletorn)
 * City of Klaipėda
 * Klaipėda district municipality
 * Eesti Power Plant
 * Narva Power Plants
 * Narva Oil Plant