Königsberg–Kaliningrad, 1928-1948

Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg–Kaliningrad, 1928-1948 By Nicole M. Eaton A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Yuri Slezkine, chair Professor John Connelly Professor Victoria Bonnell Fall 2013 Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg–Kaliningrad, 1928-1948 © 2013 By Nicole M. Eaton 1 Abstract Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg-Kaliningrad, 1928-1948 by Nicole M. Eaton Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Yuri Slezkine, Chair “Exclave: Politics, Ideology, and Everyday Life in Königsberg-Kaliningrad, 1928-1948,” looks at the history of one city in both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Russia, follow- ing the transformation of Königsberg from an East Prussian city into a Nazi German city, its destruction in the war, and its postwar rebirth as the Soviet Russian city of Kaliningrad. The city is peculiar in the history of Europe as a double exclave, first separated from Germany by the Polish Corridor, later separated from the mainland of Soviet Russia. The dissertation analyzes the ways in which each regime tried to transform the city and its inhabitants, focusing on Nazi and Soviet attempts to reconfigure urban space (the physical and symbolic landscape of the city, its public areas, markets, streets, and buildings); refashion the body (through work, leisure, nutrition, and healthcare); and reconstitute the mind (through vari- ous forms of education and propaganda). Between these two urban revolutions, it tells the story of the violent encounter between them in the spring of 1945: one of the largest offensives of the Second World War, one of the greatest civilian exoduses in human history, and one of the most violent encounters between the Soviet army and a civilian population. !This dissertation argues that the postwar socialist revolution in Kaliningrad began as a reenactment of the Russian Revolution of 1917, but the encounter with Germans in Kalinin- grad changed both the goals and the outcome of that revolution: the Soviets annexed Königsberg to replace the ethnic exclusivity of fascism with the internationalist ideology of socialism, but in the end, they erected Kaliningrad as a Russian national homeland, complete with a Slavic myth of origin and ethnic requirements for membership. i to ykw for all the flotsam and jetsam ii Table of Contents Introduction! iv Acknowledgements! vi Part I: Königsberg! 1 Seeing the City: Königsberg 1927! 2 On the Other Side of the Corridor! 14 A New Solution for Old Problems! 26 The Movement Becomes the State! 38 Reshaping Königsberg! 53 Part II: Invasion! 69 The Tragedy of Humanism! 70 Incursion! 80 The City Under Siege! 95 The Border Between Civilization and Barbarism! 108 Sacred Revenge! 116 Two Kinds of Ruin! 139 The Fall of Fortress Königsberg! 148 Part III: Kaliningrad! 159 iii Encounter! 160 Soviet Königsberg! 172 Bringing the State Back In! 178 Between Pragmatism and Planning! 196 Blood and Soil! 213 Life and Death! 228 Getting By! 238 Working Together! 263 An Antifascist Education! 283 Contamination and Marginalization! 298 Exclusion! 312 Conclusion! 331 Works Cited! 337 iv Introduction !The German city of Königsberg, destroyed by bombing and siege, became the Soviet Russian city of Kaliningrad on 4 July 1946, amidst fanfares, choruses, speeches, and parades with banners of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin. Soviet Kaliningrad was modeled as the anti- Königsberg, rising from the ruins of the devastated city: the spot on which socialism would replace fascism, a “friendship of the peoples” would triumph over racism, and freedom would defeat all forms of oppression. But two years later, in November 1948, the Kalinin- grad local newspaper, Kaliningradskaia Pravda, explained to the new Soviet settlers that Comrade Stalin’s victory in the war (“the judgment of history over Prussian militarism”) inaugurated not a new age of socialist internationalism in Kaliningrad, but the final return of “ancestral Slavic lands back to their true homeland.” The city’s remaining German population was expelled that same month. The Soviet Union annexed Königsberg to replace the ethnic exclusivity of fascism with the internationalist ideology of socialism, but they erected Kaliningrad as a Russian national homeland, complete with a Slavic myth of origin and ethnic requirements for membership. ! The dissertation follows the transformation of German Königsberg into Soviet Kalin- ingrad from 1928 to 1948, focusing on the period from 1944 to 1948, when the citizens of two mutually-exclusive totalizing regimes lived together in the same city, with competing visions of the future and conflicting explanations for the war that had brought them together. Unlike other studies of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, it analyzes an instance in which these two regimes governed the same city—not as foreign occupiers or puppet- eers, but as rulers of their own patrimony. Whereas most previous studies of “totalitarian- ism” have focused on ideologies and politics of the center, this dissertation studies Nazism and Stalinism “from below,” as the entangled history of two ideologies, two peoples, and one place. By foregrounding the city as subject, the story does not begin with the rise or fall of regimes but focuses on everyday experience of space in a city during the decades of its most dramatic and catastrophic transformation. !As two exclaves of their respective regimes, Königsberg and Kaliningrad became laboratories of violence and revolution, where local conditions led to peculiar re- articulations of ideology and its implementation. It looks at Königsberg’s shifting role in the German East from trading nexus to military stronghold to a local understanding of Na- tional Socialism that emphasized the city’s location and particular responsibility in uphold- v ing German civilization. In the first years after the war, the newest Soviet city grew up in the wild western frontier of socialism, without consistent influence from Moscow or over- arching control of the state. The socialist revolution in Kaliningrad was designed as a reenactment of the Russian Revolution of 1917, but encounters with Königsberg’s Germans and the material remains of their former city changed the goals and outcomes of that revolution. !In particular, the unresolved tensions between nationalism and internationalism in the Soviet Union during the Second World War led to the peculiar birth and development of Kaliningrad as a Russian national homeland. Day-to-day decisions in Kaliningrad were left up to local administrators, most of whom were young and under-educated, having been inducted into the party because of their bravery in battle, not for their study of Marxist the- ory. They brought with them an intuitive understanding of communism that combined the old goals of socialist internationalism (“workers of the world, unite”) with new currents of nationalism (the victory of the Great Russian people over the German fascists). Tensions between these two ideologies led to inconsistent practices in Kaliningrad: local officials planned alternately for the Sovietization of their German neighbors (with anti-fascist clubs, collective work brigades, and the promise of full citizenship) and their eradication (through starvation wages, imprisonment and executions, and increasing marginalization). In the end, the experience of cohabitation along with cues from Moscow at the beginning of the Cold War came to favor ethnic nationalism. The ideology of socialism, it turned out, was a part of the cultural (sometimes even physical) constitution of the Russian people, and fascism, likewise, seemed to be imbedded in the genetic makeup of Kaliningrad’s Germans. The Kaliningrad dilemma was resolved with the final expulsion of the remaining German population to the future East Germany, where, in the triumph of the national principle, the Germans of Kaliningrad could become good communists. !Between these two stories of urban revolutionary transformation, the dissertation tells the story of the downfall of Königsberg and the invasion of East Prussia in the spring of 1945: one of the largest offensives of the Second World War, one of the greatest civilian exoduses in human history, and one of the most violent encounters between the Soviet army and a civilian population. Soviet propaganda called for “sacred” revenge as retribution for the unprecedented destruction and violence that the Nazis carried out during their occupation. In calling for retribution that would fit the crime, however, the Soviets con- fronted the problem of how to avenge themselves while maintaining the ideals of interna- tional solidarity and the position that ordinary German civilians would not be held respon- sible for the crimes of the “Hitler clique.” At the height of mass violence in East Prussia during the last months of the war, the question of fitting retribution was discussed repeatedly by Soviet officials, newspaper correspondents, propagandists, political officers, intellectu- als, and simple soldiers. Some of them condemned the violence wholeheartedly, some justi- fied it with reservations, and some accepted it with righteous enthusiasm. I discuss the con- tours of these debates in the context of the Soviet-German encounter in East Prussia as a way to explore the general theme of violence and retribution

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