Klaipėdos universitetas

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 author attempts to reconstruct how Joseph Stalin viewed the future of the German province of East Prussian and its development within the USSR. The problems Moscow had formulating policy with respect to the newly annexed region are considered from the point of view of the conflicts between military and civil authorities. Newly discovered documents from central and local archives describe the history of the so-called Stalin Plan that outlined the development of the Kaliningrad region (1947). The results of the realization of “the Stalin Plan” are analyzed, the consequences to relations between Moscow and the Kaliningrad area are evaluated, and also their influence on the formation of Kaliningrad government structures is estimated.