Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 24 (2012): Erdvių pasisavinimas Rytų Prūsijoje XX amžiuje = Appropriation of Spaces in East Prussia during the 20th Century = Prisvoenie prostranstv v Vostochnoi Prussii v dvadtsatom stoletii, pp. 153–171
Abstract
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.
Journal:Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis
Volume 24 (2012): Erdvių pasisavinimas Rytų Prūsijoje XX amžiuje = Appropriation of Spaces in East Prussia during the 20th Century = Prisvoenie prostranstv v Vostochnoi Prussii v dvadtsatom stoletii, pp. 141–152
Abstract
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.