ABSTRACT
After World War II, many cities and towns across Eastern Europe experienced multiple upheavals: populations were lost through death, displacement and deportation, while bombing and fighting inflicted massive material damage. The new Soviet authorities had concrete reasons for adopting such an approach. They considered the Konigsberg of the past a direct threat to the establishment of the new Soviet city, and it was thus thought more judicious to declare the taking of the city by the Red Army as a fresh start. In 2012, Popadin became director of the project "Heart of the City", which is sponsored by the municipal government and charged with developing the city's historic center. In many ways, Roland Barthes’s description of the experience of viewing a photograph can also be applied to the experience of inhabiting a ruined city filled with traces of lost others.
