Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of History and Memory in Identity Construction: The Case of Kaliningrad, Formerly German Konigsberg

本论文通过调查前德国城市柯尼斯堡在1945年被苏联接管并更名为加里宁格勒后的历史来研究国家操纵民族认同的能力。 在接下来的几十年里，这座城市的战前历史成为苏联国家、地方政府和讲俄语的公民之间斗争的焦点。 尽管苏联的禁令，当地居民保持了该领土的德国历史。 访谈和档案数据将被用来记录国家推动的官方历史和当地知识分子为重现该地区的德国历史所做的努力。 建筑项目（解构、重建和保护）提供了一个特别有价值的历史记录，可以帮助我们理解这些关于集体记忆的冲突是如何随着政治制度的变化而变化的。

This dissertation investigates the ability of a state to manipulate national identity by investigating the history of the former German city of Koenigsberg after it was taken over by the Soviet Union in 1945 and renamed Kaliningrad. In the following decades, the pre-war history of the city became the focus of a struggle between the Soviet state, the local administration, and the Russian speaking citizens. Despite Soviet prohibitions, the local population maintained the German history of the territory. Interviews and archival data will be used to document the state-promoted official history and the efforts by the local intelligentsia to reproduce the German history of the territory. Architectural projects (deconstruction, reconstruction, and preservation) provide an especially valuable historical record for understanding how these conflicts over collective memory varied over time with changes in the political regime.