The Settlement of the Kaliningrad region: a question about the gender and age composition of the first settler families

Lopatin Mikhail ORCID: 0000-0003-4379-5723 Junior Researcher, Research Center for Social and Humanitarian Informatics, I. Kant Baltic Federal University 236041, Russia, Kaliningradskaya oblast', g. Kaliningrad, ul. A. Nevskogo, 14 mikhaillopatin28@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Stalmakova (Saenko) Angelina ORCID: 0000-0003-1285-2342 Junior Researcher, Research Center for Social and Humanitarian Informatics, I. Kant Baltic Federal University 236041, Russia, Kaliningradskaya oblast', g. Kaliningrad, ul. A. Nevskogo, 14 angelinasaenko08@gmail.com

Over the past few years, the Kaliningrad Region has been consistently high in the ranking in terms of demographic growth due to increasing migration. Since its foundation, the region has experienced several migration waves, the first and fundamental of which began in 1946. After the end of World War II, by the decision of the Potsdam Conference, Koenigsberg and the surrounding territories were transferred to the Soviet Union. On the territory of the former East Prussia, the Kaliningrad Region was formed, which became part of the RSFSR. The region needed not only to overcome the economic consequences of the war, but also to create a new community of Kaliningrad residents on the "trophy" territory. One of the first new residents of the region were immigrants from various regions of the USSR, primarily from the regions of Russia and Belarus most affected by the war. Soviet and Russian historians have studied in detail a number of aspects of resettlement, but at the same time many of them need clarification. So, there is no single point of view on the gender and age composition of the first settlers in the Kaliningrad region.

In Soviet times, the works of E. M. Kolganova ^{[1, 2]}, V. G. Birkovsky ^{[3, 4]}, I. A. Farutin ^[3] considered the issues of resettlement organization, reasons for relocation, benefits to migrants, and gave general quantitative indicators of the settlement of the region. Much attention was paid to the role of the Communist Party organs in the organization of resettlement.

The growth of interest in this topic began in the 1990s - with the lifting of ideological prohibitions and declassification of archival documents. The range of issues under consideration has expanded, new research methods have been applied, including "oral history". In 1989-1994, a team of researchers led by Yu. V. Kostyashov, based on the collected memories, prepared the book "East Prussia through the eyes of the first Soviet settlers" ^[5]. The issues of demography of resettlement have been given more attention since the 2000s, they are considered in detail in the dissertation of D. V. Mankevich ^[6]. In recent years, thanks to the use of modern information technologies by E. V. Baranova, V. N. Maslov and M. M. Lopatin, a set of mass documents has been introduced into scientific circulation that formalized the process of moving migrants in echelons ^[7], in particular, on its basis, the issues of providing arrived families with property have been considered ^[8].

At the moment, the exact composition of the families of the first settlers has not been established. This is largely due to the complexity of analyzing the source database due to the partial absence of statistical data and the subjective nature of sources of personal origin.

The purpose of this work is to characterize the gender and age composition of the first settlers to the Kaliningrad region based on the analysis of memories and materials of the database "Echelon lists of the first settlers to the Kaliningrad region" ^[7].

At the moment, the database contains records of almost 65 thousand.  The studied sample, although not strictly random, is approaching this quality (an ordinary situation for historical data), the ratio between it and the general population is sufficient to extrapolate sample results: in general, in 1946-1947, more than 220 thousand (228419) people moved to the region ^{[9, p. 92]}.

The second source was the memories of immigrants who arrived in the region in 1946-1947, which were collected in the early 1990s by students and teachers of Kaliningrad State University.

 During the interview, respondents were asked questions on nine different topics: biographical data, recruitment, relocation, first impressions, housing, work, socio-political and cultural life, relations with the German population, education. The memoirs contain a wealth of factual material, both about the events of the post-war period and about the historical memory of Kaliningrad residents.

The collected materials of oral history were stored for a long time in the archive of the university on paper, as a result of which they were not available for computerized analysis. In 2021, the staff of the SIC of Social and Humanitarian Informatics of the I. Kant BFU began the process of digitizing the collected materials, which, in addition to being translated into machine-readable format, are fragmented by topics identified in the 1990s. At the moment, the total volume of processed texts is 1,639,729 characters.

Fragments related to the relocation process were selected for analysis (60,480 characters in total). Figure 1 reflects the topics mentioned by respondents in the context of the description of moving to the Kaliningrad region. In addition to the description of the cars ("wagon" - 117 times, "train" — 76) and the moving process, among the 10 most frequently mentioned words is "family" (38 times). Interestingly, the mention of the father (20 times) is more common than the mother (17 times).

"We arrived at the station and got into a hot car and drove off. We were traveling in the "500-fun", the whole family. We drove for a long time, about a week. There were stops. During the stops, food was bought. There were checks. They carried the most necessary things with them: to get dressed, to put on shoes... They drove very merrily, with songs, with fun"^{[10, Vasily Fedorovich Parfenov, 1946, p.]}.

Fig. 1. Cloud words in the context of the category of "Move".

Mentions of sex and age composition of the population appeared in the memoirs only in the context of other events. So, one of the most important places in the stories of immigrants — experiences related to the process of moving. Interviewees often mentioned that among the settlers was dominated by children and young people:

"The cars were crowded. In the car, where I went, there were 16 people, most of them children"

^{[10, Selezneva Anastasiya levinton, 1948, p.]}.

"Our car was driving just women but the children and a disabled war veteran, he first thought that this attack. He had the shotgun from where he started shooting"

^{[10, Klimko Galina, 1946 p.]}.

It was at the end of may 1946, I at that time was 6 years <...>. Inside the car, no shelves were not. We all slept on the floor. Immediately lay our stuff. In the carriage there were 4 large family was not a single adult men, all women with children. On the way we was three months. Often stopped, sometimes for three days. During stops all went out to walk, were dancing under the balalaika. Our sister at the dance became acquainted with her future husband. To me, in spite of everything, loved to ride the train, because it was my first trip on this truck.

^{[10, Kirsanova Antonina M., 1946 p.]}

Materials of memories supported by the data echelon of lists that talk about the number of arrivals in Kaliningrad oblast adults was less than a third (31%). The distribution of immigrants by age, are presented in the histogram (Fig. 2), pronounced imbalance between the older and younger generation. Also good (especially in the "funnel", Fig. 3) are two of the scar left on the population of the great Patriotic war:

1. Hauling in the field of 0-5 years, probably primarily due to low birth rates and survival of children in the first years of life in the harsh wartime conditions.

2. Demographic hole among middle-aged people, beginning a little later adulthood (i.e. military age) and ending 35 years.

Fig. 2. The distribution of immigrants and heads of families by age

Because of the demographic skew the average age of immigrants is 23. For adults it is equal 35-36, juvenile -10 (9,6) years. While children 48,04%, adolescents 10-17 years 51,96%. The form of the distribution of the sample is divided into several different age groups: the border between them has been shifted to 30 years. The average value characteristic of the age in these associations is defined as 13-14 years and 43 years, respectively. The average age of the family head is also quite high — 39-40 years (Fig. 2).

Fig. 3. Funnel of distribution of the number of migrants by age

The fact that the settlers were represented mainly by the younger generation influenced the further history of the formation of the region. For example, some teenagers were forced to interrupt school education because they were involved in work activities no less than adults:

"We worked on a collective farm. I went to school when I was seven years old, I moved to the 8th grade in the village, and after graduation I went to the district to study. I missed one school year because I had to thresh sheaves in winter. That's why we worked. They also worked on potatoes, took care of cattle. There were no adults there, mostly only young people..."^{[10, Lydia Arsenyevna Kryazheva, 1952, p.]}

In some types of professional activity there was a shortage of the adult population:

"We didn't have enough teachers, there were a lot of children. My first teacher, Raisa Valentinovna, she taught me to write..."^{[10, Arkusha Olympiada Filippovna, 1946, p.]}.

If in other parts of the Soviet Union in the post–war decade there was a tendency to aging of the population ^{[11, p. 235]}, then in the Kaliningrad region it did not manifest itself, on the contrary, until 1950 there was an ultra-high birth rate in the region, due to the young composition of the population and post-war demographic compensation.

These processes were influenced by the ratio of male and female population in the Kaliningrad region. In the post-war period, according to general statistics in the USSR ^{[12, p. 107]} and the post-war census of 1959 ^[13], there was a sharp gender disparity. The situation in the Kaliningrad region had its own peculiarities.

According to the database, adult men accounted for 38%, and women — 62%, i.e. the gap reached 1.6 times. However, when considering the entire sample of migrants, the significant gender bias characteristic of adults remains in the shadow of the prevailing number of persons under 18 years of age – with approximately equal proportions of both sexes. Therefore, in the total mass of arrivals, the number of men is slightly inferior to the number of women: the former account for 44.3%, the latter — 55.7%.

The number of arriving men and women of different ages is shown in the petal diagram (Fig. 4). Until adulthood, the values are high and practically coincide between the sexes. From the age of 19, a huge reduction in the number of men occurs simultaneously, and after the age of 21-24, women, although they continue to significantly outnumber the former for older ages, where both sexes have similar distributions. As a result of such changes in the number and sex ratio for different years, the average age of a male migrant is 16-17 years old, and a woman is 29 years old.

According to the memoirs of the settlers, a different picture was observed in the regional center, where the male population prevailed — after the end of hostilities, the main part of the city's population was military:

"There were a lot of men in Kaliningrad after the war, the city was male"^{[10, Feofelaktova Tatiana Anatolyevna, 1945, p.]}

"I went to Kaliningrad as a part of 28 people (the whole group). We were traveling in a wooden freight train ..... Along the way, the military from other places sat down. They were also going to Kaliningrad. Someone was heating the stove in the freight train"^{[10, Kopylova Iraida Yakovlevna, 1946, p.]}

Later, by 1948, the situation began to change, as many university graduates were distributed to the city.

After graduating from the zootechnikum, we, young specialists, were waiting for distribution. We were told where the requests for young specialists came from. The Department of Agriculture of the Kaliningrad Region was also on this list. I was the head of the group, and I really wanted to go on assignment to the Kaliningrad region. I remember there was a big map of the Soviet Union hanging in our office. I climbed on a chair and began to look for Konigsberg on the map. When I found it, I began to show the whole group this place on the map and threw a cry: "Guys, I'm going to Konigsberg! Who's with me?" Nine people responded, they decided to go to restore the livestock industry of the Kaliningrad region together with me. Interestingly, only girls agreed to go to the former East Prussia. No young man has expressed such a desire.

^{[10, Pylakina (Fedulova) Ekaterina Andreevna, 1948, p.]}

It is worth noting that in relation to the urban population, the memories of immigrants are almost the only source of research, since statistical calculations were not made separately for Kaliningrad ^{[11, p. 237]}

Resettlement to the Kaliningrad region took place as part of families. The database contains information about the relocation of more than 13 thousand families to the region. Of these, the intention to move was realized by about 12 thousand — not arrived, but already listed in the echelon lists of families — 8%. Data on the number of families of different sizes indicate that most often they consisted of 4-6 people — two adults and children. The average age of family members was 20-25 years (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5. Distribution of families by size, along the auxiliary axis — the average age in them

Despite the predominance of the number of women — especially in adulthood — the absolute majority of heads of families (74%) were men. At the same time, as can be seen in the diagram (Fig. 6), there were practically no adult men who were not the head of the family. Women became heads of families only in the absence of a spouse.

Fig. 6. Distribution of the number of migrants and heads of families by gender

This is confirmed by the analysis of references to close relatives of different sexes in the full array of memories of the settlers of 1946-1947 (lexical units: father (dad), mother (mom), sister, brother, grandmother and grandfather (grandfather)). Although the diagram shows that, in the general array of memories, the mention of the mother is more common than the father, the context differs. Memories of the mother relate to interaction with people around, about the father — with work and military service.

Fig. 7. Mention of relatives in the general array of memories of immigrants

The memories of the settlers and the records of the echelon lists give a similar idea of the gender and age characteristics of the migration influx that filled the region in the first years of its existence, and in many ways complement each other. Based on the analysis , the following conclusions can be drawn:

1) The settlement of the Kaliningrad region was carried out by families of 4-6 people, the average age in them was 20-25 years. The head of the family in 74% of cases was a man about 40 years old.

2) Two thirds of the population arriving in echelons were children and youth (69%), whose average age was 10 (9.6) years, while the number of teenagers (51.96%) slightly exceeded the number of children under 10 years (48.04%).

3) Women predominated among the adult population (62%), which was due to the consequences of the war. As a result of changes in the number and sex ratio for different years, the average age of a male migrant was 16-17 years old, and a female was 29 years old. 

4) A different picture was observed in the city of Kaliningrad, where the majority of the population were military men. Data on the population in the city have been preserved mainly in the memories of the settlers.

^[1] Processing of the echelon lists of 1947 and the documents attached to them continues. Based on the volume of archival files, it is assumed that upon completion of the database formation, it will contain data on at least 100 thousand personalities.