Staatsgewalt und religiöse Gemeinschaften im Kaliningrader Gebiet in der Phase des Spätstalinismus (1945–1953)

Abstract

Summary After 1945, more than 100,000 Germans remained in the Kaliningrad region, in the north of Eastern Prussia under Soviet rule. The new authorities allowed the Evangelical and Catholic clerics to continue their work and accepted them as intermediaries between the authorities and the German population. Finally, in 1947, pressure was placed on them to register their communities on the basis of the Soviet legislation. This article, which mainly relies upon unpublished documents from Russian archives, complements the memoirs of Pastor Hugo Linck. The documents confirm how some individuals within the authorities at Kaliningrad and Moscow supported the desire of believers among the new settlers to register Orthodox communities in the Kaliningrad Region. However, under pressure from the Communist Party, such plans were soon strictly suppressed. Following the end of Evangelical and Catholic Church life in the Kaliningrad Region, due to the deportation of the last Germans in 1948, this was the only Soviet territory without any legal religious communities for a long period. In 1967, the Evangelical Christians-Baptists were the first to succeed in registering their community. The first Orthodox community was only legalized in the Perestroika era.