“We Managed to Transport Furniture and Even a Cow, Sheep, and Goats”: the Personal Belongings of the Rural Immigrants Who Came to the Kaliningrad Region in 1946

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of provision with personal property of rural settlers in the Kaliningrad region after World War II. A significant role in the material well-being of workers of collective and state farms was played by subsidiary farms. Basing on materials included in the database of immigrants to the new Russian region, the presence of cows, calves, goats, sheep, pigs, poultry, forage, food and household items in the immigrant families is analyzed for the year 1946. Well-being of households arriving in the region from different regions is compared according to each type of possessings. Taking into account the places of exit, the resettlement families are divided into further groups: low-income, medium-income, and high-income households with livestock and belongings. Property disproportions are explained by the consequences of the Great Patriotic War and the specifics of the places of exit. The study of migrants’ interviews made it possible to determine the composition of the items included in the “household possessions” category. In the difficult first post-war year, not all the villagers who came to domesticate the Kaliningrad region were provided with cattle, furniture and utensils, food stock. There was not enough roughage for domestic animals. However, half or more of the migrating families had cows, sheep, goats and poultry in their private farms, which was one of the factors that helped them to survive the post-war famine.