Introduction

The inclusion of the city and oblast into the RSFSR in April 1946 allowed for the city's administration to at last move away from simple, practical subsistence and instead begin to understand the region in relation to the wider Soviet project. Consequently, the contradictions and nuances that had accompanied the implementation of Soviet nationality policy elsewhere in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s were exacerbated in the Baltic region on a profound scale. Irrespective of the specific circumstances of the two region's annexation, victory in the Great Patriotic War became 'the cornerstone of Soviet patriotism, the demonstration of national virtue and proof of the link between the communist party and its people'. Rather, the logic of Soviet nationality policy that had informed the post-war resettlement of the territory meant that settlers to the region lacked any common 'ethnic origin'.