Klaipėdos universitetas

The article analyzes the competition between the official and alternative discourses of the region’s past that formed in Kaliningrad over the 70s to the 80s of the 20th c. The author notes that, next to the efforts of the government to form a respective image of the past of the pre-war Kaliningrad Oblast, different behaviour strategies formed which enabled the preparation of the ground for the rehabilitation of the prewar cultural heritage even under the conditions of ideological dictate. The process of the formation of a mechanism of continuous interest in the past of the region is examined, and formal and informal groups that undertook to meet the interest in the years of Perestroika are characterized.

The use of the “bright tomorrow” mythologeme in Soviet propaganda and the claims to turn Kaliningrad Oblast into a “normal”, standard region of Russia are discussed in the article as the principal strategies applied to Kaliningrad Region that aimed to form the identity of the local population and the growing intimacy with the new place of residence. The author seeks to demonstrate the fact that Kaliningrad images, as depicted by the Soviet propaganda, were evoking increasingly diminishing trust and failed to ensure the desired certainty about the future on the new territory primarily due to the confrontation with reality: a difficult post-war situation in the region and the problems caused by the remoteness from Russia, as well as the feeling that Russia did not take proper care of them.

The article intends to establish which images of East Prussia and its local population were maintained and what kind of relations with the “German heritage” was formed in the documents of the official military and civil authorities in Kaliningrad Oblast in the period of 1945 to 1950. The question of the impact of the cultural uniqueness of East Prussia made on the official propaganda-supported approach to East Prussia and the local population is raised. The author demonstrates that the said approach did not always coincide with the approach that was forming due to the daily social interaction between the newcomers and the old “German” residents with their cultural heritage.