ABSTRACT
In Soviet Kaliningrad, the notion manifested itself most clearly through changes to the urban fabric: first through the ideological condemnation of the German city’s layout and topography; then – once finances allowed – through the physical destruction of its most symbolic markers. This notion manifested itself most clearly through the renaming of the territory from Konigsberg to Kaliningrad in July 1946. With regard to the latter, the new monuments were hastily constructed during the first years of Soviet Kaliningrad and were thus of poor quality. The dual focus of the restoration project meant that the architecture and urbanism of Soviet Kaliningrad had to further represent the ‘physical manifestation of the societal transformation brought about by communism’. In many ways echoing the techniques employed by the Bolsheviks half a century earlier, efforts to distance Kaliningrad from its Soviet heritage have, once again, consisted of campaigns to both redraw the region’s topography and re-appropriate its symbolism.
