This volume presents the way the discourse of memory and identity in the post-Soviet territory of Kaliningrad Oblast has altered over time, examining the ways in which politically motivated German myths about East Prussia, which emerged after the unification of Germany in 1871, were reused and adapted after 1991 and the role the region has played in wider memory policies of the Russian Federation, particularly since Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term began in 2012.
Kaliningrad Oblast is Russia’s westernmost region, maintaining a direct maritime but no land connection with the rest of the country. The region was part of East Prussia, which became a crucial element of the German national mythology after 1871. In 1945, East Prussia became one of the Soviet Union’s most important war trophies. Ever since, its complex political, cultural, ethnic, and religious history has presented a challenge to the central Soviet and Russian authorities. Ever since the emergence of a deep internal crisis in the Soviet system in the 1980s, the role of the Oblast’s past has been subject to intense public debate, reflecting the intricacies of post-Soviet Russian memory politics.
This book is an intensely revised version of my Ph.D. dissertation. I completed it at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences and successfully defended at the SWPS University. At the Institute, I carried out a research project on identity of the inhabitants of Kaliningrad Oblast, funded by the National Science Centre of Poland (2014/13/N/HS6/04214). The initial translation and revision was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation within the research project “Ukrainian Long-Distance Nationalism in the Cold War: A Transnational History” (KAW 2019.0151).
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