Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The paper is a keynote address to the conference ‘Contacts and Cultural Transfer in the Historical Region of East Prussia (1700–2000)’ that took place in Nida in September 2013. It considers what the East Prussia region means, and what it is associated with today, after it stopped existing 70 years ago. The question is asked what the current situation of East Prussian historiography is, and potential directions for the development of new relevant research are outlined. The author argues that in the process of the cognition of East Prussia, a shift was made from the conservative system of meanings, developed mainly by the former local elites in Germany after the Second World War, to the cognition of regional diversity, which existed before the era of nationalism, and to coping with national narratives about East Prussia. Simultaneously, in the former territory of East Prussia, which currently belongs to Poland, Russia and Lithuania, individual elements of the past of the region continue to occupy an increasingly important role in layers of the local identity, and form opportunities for local cultures of remembrance.

The article deals with the settling down process of the newcomers to post-war Olsztyn, i. e. their efforts to develop their own relationship with the environment of the place of residence they arrived in from other territories. The author believes that the “national” (Polish) version of reading of the past of the city that took root in the Soviet years and that neglected the regional specificities of Warmia and Masuria served as one of the major stimuli accounting for the settlers’ formation of meaningful relationships with Olsztyn. By comparing the meanings used in the formation of relationships in the periods before and after 1989, the author demonstrates that the said “national” version of reading the past of the city presently co-exists with the efforts to popularize regional history and the multiculturalism of the past of Warmia and Masuria.

The article reveals the principal trends of changes in the relationship with the past in the city of Kaliningrad at the turn of the 21st c. It examines how different social groups and institutions – amateur and professional historians, veterans of World War II, museums, and interest groups abroad – were solving the dilemma that emerged in Kaliningrad during the Perestroika period and were trying to choose what was native and what was foreign in the past of the city. The author argues that the active formation of the relationship with the past of the city, especially during the last decade, by those groups intertwines with the efforts to strengthen ties between Russia and its exclave and makes an impact on the Russianization of the city areas and East Prussian cultural heritage.

The article analyzes the mechanisms of institutionalization of the collective memory of regional identity, as its significant dimension, and assesses discursive strategies used by different politicians. The author discloses the principal elements of the regional identity in the Soviet period and analyzes the practices of collective memory and historical consciousness in the period of 1945 to 1990. The relationship of the history policies of the Soviet period and the contemporary political processes is demonstrated.

The paper gives an overview of military developments on the final stage of Second World War in the East Prussia territory. The events in this area had been sticked in collective German memory as an Apocalypse. The extensive crimes committed by the conqueror, the motives for the mass criminality in East Prussia are examined as well. These events left a collective trauma in the culture of German remembrance, but the consequences for the Soviet Union were also negative.