Featured Graduate Student Research: Alexandra Sukalo

I am a PhD Candidate in Russian and Eastern European history and I traveled to Lithuania to conduct research for my dissertation from January-March 2019. The Europe Center’s Graduate Student Travel Grant supported my research for these three months. My dissertation, entitled “Surveillance’s Doubled-Edged Sword: Intelligence and Identities in the Soviet Republics, 1918-1954,” examines the institutionalization of the Soviet political police in Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine. It also explores the role of the political police in transforming these once-independent countries into Soviet socialist republics.

From January to March, I was based in Vilnius, Lithuania, which is home to the Lithuania Communist Party Archives and the archives of the Soviet political police. Many of the sources for my dissertation are only found in Lithuania and the other former Soviet republics, and the Europe Center Travel Grant made it possible for me to travel to Lithuania and conduct the research necessary for me to write my dissertation. In particular, my dissertation draws on Communist party meeting minutes, personnel files, government reports, and interrogations. Many of these documents have only become accessible to foreign scholars in the past few years, and my dissertation will make these sources available to a broader audience.

In addition to working in the archives, I was fortunate to have an affiliation with Vilnius State University, and to connect with historians at the Institute of History in Lithuania. I was able to discuss my project with Lithuanian scholars, and to learn of new sources that I had yet to explore. These relationships are not only vital to my research, but also to my future career as a historian.

The Europe Center Travel Grant enabled me to complete this vital research in Lithuania. I was able to fly round-trip to Lithuania, and to stay in an apartment close to the archives. I greatly appreciate the support.