Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The article analyses the formation of mental links between the population of East Prussia and the natural and cultural landscape of the said German province after World War I. By interpreting landscape as an imaginary space whose symbols may impact identity, the author analyzes several ways of nationalization of the East Prussian landscape. They include: studies of the homeland newly defined by the Versailles Peace Treaty at school and in daily life; popularization of tours for youth of the pre-promoted places of the province; organized care of wartime military cemeteries moderately integrated into the landscape; the construction of the Tannenberg memorial complex and giving meanings to it; and reconstruction of war-devastated cities and towns of East Prussia. The article demonstrates that the creation of meaningful links between the German population, the homeland (East Prussia), the elements of its natural and cultural landscape, and the Fatherland (Germany) formed a unique perception of the region which was primarily related to its meaning of a German outpost in the East.

On the basis of statistical economic indicators, diplomatic correspondence, diaries of Russian travellers, memoirs, essays, and letters, the article seeks to answer the question of what place East Prussia occupied in the economic, political, and cultural space of Russia. When considering the dimensions making up the image of East Prussia that was maintained in the consciousness of Russian people, the author identifies six of them and demonstrates the changes of their content in different discourses supported within the Russian Empire from the mid-19th c. to World War I.

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.

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 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 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 focuses on the role of the specificity related to East Prussia and its past in the current self-consciousness of the population of Kaliningrad Oblast and in the future strategies of the said territory of Russia. The author questions both the impact of the above mentioned specificity on the formation of uniqueness of Kaliningrad people in the context of other Russian territories and the existence of a special Kaliningradian identity. To his mind, for the population of Kaliningrad, East Prussia is a multidimensional symbol that provokes different social-cultural phenomena and simultaneously is used in order to trigger, maintain, and enhance the phenomena.

The article reveals the assumptions under which Polish claims to Warmia and Masuria Regions were legitimated in the 20th c. and the impact made on the starting points of the policies applied after WWII to the integration of Warmia and Masuria into Poland by the ideological political situation and the ratio of powers formed in the years of the war. The author pays great attention to the disclosure of the policy of “de-Germanization” and its practices by demonstrating the ways of instrumentalization of anti-German attitudes by the postwar Polish authorities, thus promoting the symbolical integration of former German territories (the Recovered Lands) into the minds of Polish settlers in them.

By considering what Warmia and Masuria Regions mean to contemporary Poles, the author tries to find an answer by identifying two levels of acquaintanceship with the region: narrative constructions that acquired the forms of myths and scientific cognition. He analyzes the maintenance of two myths around which the images relating to the comprehension of the said regions concentrate: the myth of the Recovered Lands and the myth of Arcadia. Simultaneously, he discusses the meanings of Warmia and Masuria disclosed by scientific studies of the last two decades in contemporary Poland and the changing conceptions of the past of the region resulting in unique forms of identifying oneself with the past of Warmia and Masuria Regions.