Kaliningrad - Poles in Kaliningrad

Poles in Kaliningrad

In the 1940s and 1950s the Soviets resettled Poles from Belarus, the Baltic states, the Ukraine and Russia to Kaliningrad. According to Wacław Podbereski after the Second World War and the takeover of the administration in these areas by the Soviets, the development of the Polish element in this region effectively ceased. The oldest church in Königsberg was the Polish church of St. Nicholas, which had been founded with the city in 1255 in the historic district of Steindamm and was dismantled in 1950. Change came with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, due mainly to pastoral activities that began the repolonization of the Poles in Russia. The first steps were made by a Polish priest from Grodno (Hrodna), Fr. Jerzy Steckiewicz.

The "Polish Cultural Community in Kaliningrad" operates as the main Polish organization among Kaliningrad's Polonia, one of six such Polish organizations within Kaliningrad Oblast . Wspolnota Polska estimates that there is likely to be between 15,000 to 20,000 Poles living in the entire oblast. The "Polish Cultural Community in Kaliningrad" organizes poetry contests and is the publisher of the local Polish language newspaper "The Voice from the Pregel" . In the entire Kaliningrad Oblast there are 6 Polish organizations. The whole Kaliningrad Oblast has witnessed an increase in Polish cultural activity since the fall of the Soviet Union, partly due to the immigration of Polish families from Kazakhstan, who had been deported by Stalin during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939.

See also: History of Poles in Königsberg