The protests were partly organised by activists from the new united opposition movement, Solidarity. Ilya Yashin, a popular blogger, explained its strategy: "Previously, we have focused on trying to raise an opposition where the living is too good, like in Moscow, and one is not needed. We ignored the small towns where most people live. We successfully organised protests in Vladivostok. This is the region's first strategy." Boris Nemtsov, the pre-eminent opposition leader in Russia today, told me: "We are trying to build a network out in the provinces where people only have state TV and simply don't know that there is an alternative." The protest in Kaliningrad is the first sign that young Russians are not all comfortable with Putin's drift towards "the China model".

The longer I spent in Kaliningrad, the more of Königsberg I began to see. I started to notice that many of the dilapidated buildings I had presumed to be Russian were actually German. The Hotel Moscow turned out to have previously housed an insurance company. The old German cathedral still stands, thanks to Lenin's adulation of Kant as one of the sources of Marxist-Leninism. The tomb of the philosopher sits beside it. But when one enters the building, the first sight is a framed copy of Putin's business card beside the ticket office. Some of the old red-brick renaissance gates of the city are visible. One is now a restaurant, with a plaque saying Putin himself has eaten there. Packs of wild dogs roam streets where the trams still run on German tracks.

Russians seem nostalgic for a past so destroyed they could even appropriate some of Königsberg's as their own. The young have taken to affectionately calling the city "Konig", aware that its German past is the only way of attracting the attention of tourists or business. Old photos adorn café walls. There is a sense of shame among the Russians that they have not been able to build anything that matches its former glory. Yet the overriding emotion is one of absence. Königsberg is dead and exists only in dwindling memory. 

In search of German ghosts, I took a trip to a remote corner of the countryside, through towns renamed after the Red Pioneers who settled here after the war: "Soldiers", "Sovietish", "Fishermen." 

After an hour and half, we reached the seashore. Sergei, the driver, cranked open the boot and produced the usual crumpled photograph of an unattractive little girl. "My daughter." Her hands are plunged into shoals of orange glass beads. "That's our amber. Sometimes the sea brings it in. Let's have a look at that beach. A great place for windsurfing."