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 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 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.