the countryside. To some extent, the population of each district – there were 13 in Kaliningrad Oblast – was formed by people from a particular area of the Soviet Union.
The second category of migrants is a working staff of different qualification. They immigrated centralized by directions of ministries or by the invitation of some large enterprises. Among them were graduates of technical schools and institutes, who arrived by distribution. Therefore, in the Kaliningrad region was originally a high proportion of the urban population.
Another important category is employees of various government, party and komsomol organizations. They arrived by so-called «permit of the Central Committee».
There was another category of persons, who in the documents and records of agencies were mentioned under «accepted on the spot». These people arrived on their own, outside relocation and control procedures, so their numbers are difficult to estimate.
As a result, in the second half of the 1940s the population of Oblast was formed by immigrants from Russia, Belarus, to a lesser extent from Ukraine and the Baltic states. The share of the other Soviet republics was negligible.
Expectations of many immigrants did not materialize. This explains the considerable outflow of people. Nearly all immigrants agreed that Königsberg impressed them as ’burnt, destroyed to the ground, and left by inhabitants place’. One of the first detailed textbooks on the history of the region for students of the Faculty of History explained the reasons for returning of migrants: «Not everyone had the courage to participate in the reconstruction of the territory under unusual climatic and geographical conditions»149.
However, the expectations of other nature were met: Many immigrants understood that they are going to other «world». The consequences of the war could not eliminate feelings of great curiosity among immigrants. «When we approached the city by train, the houses with a slate roof amazed us. It was very unusual and immediately clear – here lived other people. Gabled roofs of the houses looked beautiful», describes Alevtina Tselovalnikova from Ryazan – «Everything around us seemed strange, unusual, and a bit frightening: a neat village houses, roofed with red tiles and tree-lined roads and asphalt everywhere». «Even through the ruins, which I watched from the window of the car, it was clear that here is not Russia, but Western Europe… all around us was interesting, strange, curious», says Anna Kopylova, giving her first impressions150.
However, the frequent lack of basic amenities made about a third of the first immigrants to leave Kaliningrad. Especially significant was the proportion of returnees among the inhabitants of the Baltic states. Among other reasons, this can be explained in the following terms – the geographical proximity of their home, a lesser degree of post-war devastation in the Baltic states, and a slightly better level of living conditions.
The most significant flow of population took place during 1946—49. This was due to the deportation of the German population, the active recruitment of Soviet citizens, and the flow of the first «returnees». In the mid-1950s, the social structure of population began to take stability, and the population started to grow mainly due to high birth rates.
However, in contrast to other regions of Russia, boundaries of social groups in Kaliningrad were more diffuse and continued to emerge for a long time. One of the reasons was the professional background of population. Many immigrants had to learn new profession, or content of their work was different from what they did at the previous job. The above-mentioned fact caused the marginal nature of professional specialization and its instability. Formation of the local educational system has solved this problem, but it was only towards the end of the 1950s. Until then, the situation was extremely complex: «Twenty per cent of downtime was due to the inexperience of mechanics. Accountants had no experience with calculations; they demanded to be under control around the clock. Among investigators, there was nobody in entire region who could meet the most elementary requirements of their job, and the other half of them never worked as prosecutors before»151.
2.2.3. Migration and society in 1950—1980: Creation of a Soviet city in Kaliningrad
In the late 1950s, the value of net migration was negative for the first time. Between 1946 and 1958, 1,286,000 migrants arrived at the Oblast while 820,000 left. This means that nearly two-thirds of immigrants left the Kaliningrad Oblast. In fact, there was no permanent population in Kaliningrad Oblast until the end of the 1950s. Life in the province was marked by a «method of rotation». Such shifting of population has formed a kind of psychology with a sense of temporality that to some extent stuck in the mentality of Kaliningradians152.
The city as a space for a new community of people would reflect the socio-economic development. However, the nature of the urban population of the Kaliningrad region in the early 1950s had a significant qualitative difference from the average Soviet indicators. There was a significant mix of rural and urban population in regional cities and villages in Kaliningrad Oblast. This leads to difficulties in adapting to unusual way and pace of life, and most importantly, to the other types of employment and professional occupation not typical for the average Soviet city.
The surprising fact: up to one third of the population of towns was engaged in natural household. It means that share of households and small farms of individual property in urban areas were somehow comparable to their share in villages. Lifestyle of urban residents was partly associated with agricultural work – about a third of urban households had a so-called «dacha», where they grew fruits and vegetables for their own consumption.
Migration flows, frequent change of residence, significant social disruption, and the complexity of development of the new territory led to the above-mentioned consequences. The song «Kaliningrad, my city, my garden» was very popular during the Soviet period. The distinction between town and country was present somehow conditionally for a long time.
The city did not exist in a typical Soviet sense of this word. By the end of the 1950s, the delay of recovery of the Kaliningrad was so obvious that became the theme for the local press153. On the pages of the official newspaper of the regional committee of the Communist Party «Kaliningradskaja Pravda»: «There are beautiful, well-lighted main street in every Soviet city: in Moscow, the avenue of Gorky; in Leningrad, Nevsky Prospect; and in Kiev, Khreschatyk. The workers love these streets, they are proud of them; these streets are their favourite places of recreation. There are no so far such streets in Kaliningrad. Many streets poorly equipped with lighting. We have some beautiful houses, but we have no streets that are one-piece architectural ensemble, architectural and artistic unity»154. It is obvious that this view expressed the anxiety of both ordinary citizens and party leadership of the city; otherwise, this article could not appear in the newspaper.
Together to build the entire city was the central point of identification of people with new place155: «We are the builders of this city». Not for nothing, in post-Soviet time was established a medal «For participation in the reconstruction of the Kaliningrad Oblast», as recognition for those people who were involved in the recovery of the regional economy and infrastructure. However, in Soviet time, nobody talked about ’restoration»; it was only about the «construction» of a new one. «The German architectural standard should be completely buried in oblivion, as it leads to discouragement of Russian people,» argued the largest
Birkovski, Vasilij; Gordeev, Ivan, Zaboenkova, Alla. (ed.): Istorija kraja (1945—1950). Uchebnoe posobie dla studentov-istorikov Kaliningradskogo universiteta. Kaliningrad 1984, p. 75.
Kostjashov, Juri. Op. cit., 2002, p. 78.
Maslov, Vilaly. (ed.): V nachale novogo puti: Dokumenty i materialy o razvitii Kaliningradskoj oblasti v gody dejatelnosti chrezvychainych organov upravlenija (aprel 1945 – ijun 1947). Kaliningrad 2004, p. 144, 194.
Kostjashov, Juri: «Obratnichestvo» v processe zaselenija Kaliningradskoj oblasti v poslevojennye gody, In: Baltijckij region v istorii Rossija i Europy. Kaliningrad 2005, p. 211—219.
Hoppe, Bert: Op. cit., p. 150.
Zastroit i blagoystroit, Kaliningradskaja Pravda, 6 February 1954.
Sezneva, Olga: Modalities of Self-understanding, Identification and Representation in the Post-1991 Kaliningrad. A Critical View, In: Kaliningrad in Europe: Perspectives from inside and outside. Lüneburg 2010, p. 42.
