Individual projects

The project deals with proposals and ideas about European unification presented by Eastern European emigrant politicians during the Cold War. Their ultimate plan was to restore liberal democracy in their home countries, and unification was a parallel goal to that. However, the concept and content of the idea of Europe was not shared by all emigration, but it divided the political elite. Furthermore, their American sponsors and Western European colleagues gradually abandoned the Eastern partners and started to create contacts to the civil society of the Soviet bloc. The research is based on extensive archival material of Assembly of Captive European Nations (a collective organization for emigrants from nine countries), Free Europe Committee (a clandestine American organization to provide them official funding), and European organizations for unification, such as European Movement and Council of Europe. I have already collected the relevant material at the Immigration History Research Center in Minneapolis, Hoover Institute at Stanford and Historical Archives of European Union in Florence. During the fellowship, the goal is to complete a scholarly monograph on this topic. Additionally, I’ll write an article on the evolution of the concept of Europe within Anti-bolshevik Bloc of Nations, a right-wing emigrant collective.

This project investigates Soviet counterintelligence operations in the Dnipropetrovsk region during the Khrushchev Thaw (mid-1950s to early 1960s), focusing on the KGB’s role in securing classified defense-industrial information, exerting control over urban life, and recruiting locals for intelligence operations. Due to its status as a pivotal hub for missile and rocket production, Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro) was designated a “closed city” in 1959. The research examines how the KGB managed industrial espionage by both monitoring foreign visitors and mobilizing local professionals – engineers and scientists – as informants. Additionally, the study explores how Soviet authorities implemented strict security protocols, controlled information flows, and influenced the everyday lives of residents through surveillance, censorship, and ideological enforcement. Through the analysis of newly accessible archival materials and previously overlooked historiographical sources, this study reveals the intricate mechanisms of secrecy enforcement and internal surveillance. Grounded in theories of state surveillance and social control (Foucault, Scott, Popper), this research highlights the complex interplay between technological progress, state control, and the lived realities of citizens. Ultimately, this research contributes to Cold War studies by shifting the focus from external espionage to domestic counterintelligence, offering fresh insights into Soviet industrial security and the impact of strict surveillance on local society.

The waterways that flow through large cities are living sources of the history, of urban planning, wastewater or drinking water management policies, but they also reflect local mind-sets and practices over time. It is a social and cultural fabric around rivers, canals, and water sources. Urban water constitute as much a local place for life as it is a resource with broader ecological and geopolitical stakes. During the residency in Sofia, I aim to explore this field by walking along the banks of two rivers in the form of strolls with local artists, architects, curators, and scientists. Talking Streams is a curatorial research project that seeks to create a collective mental map of waterways and gather various voices into a sound archive, emphasizing the life that develops within and around the streams.

How long can elites maintain a high social status? How quickly can ordinary people move up the social ladder? Gary Becker and Nigel Tomes (1986) show that the income advantageous or disadvantageous of ancestors has disappeared in three generations. Nevertheless, Gregory Clark and colleagues (Clark, 2014; 2015), using surname records and historical data, find that elites retain a high social status for centuries with a probability close to one. Using Gregory Clark’s innovative approach, my study attempts to answer these and other related questions by analyzing the mobility of Ukrainian lineages during the 19th-21st centuries on the territory of modern Ukraine, Russia, the former USSR and the Russian Empire. Preliminary calculations show that holders of Ukrainian noble surnames were two times overrepresented in the State Duma of the Russian Empire. Were they able to maintain their high social status during two world wars, the October Revolution, and the formation and collapse of the USSR? Did the Communist Party and national independence facilitate the social advancement of individuals having common Ukrainian lineages? The answer to these questions will not only complement existing research but also reassess the history and logic of those turbulent events that we are witnessing today.

The proposed project examines Mykhailo Drahomanov’s political and intellectual role in the formation of modern Ukraine in the 19th century. It analyses Drahomanov’s interpretation of socialism within the broader traditions of Western European utopian socialism (Proudhon, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen) and Russian revolutionary thought (Herzen, Ogarev, Lavrov, Kropotkin, Plekhanov), tracing the evolution of his ideas in response to shifting political and social conditions. Often referred to as a “second Herzen,” Drahomanov played a key role in adapting socialist thought to Ukraine’s stateless condition, advocating for federalism, cultural autonomy, democratic socialism, and anarchism. The novelty of the project lies in situating Ukrainian modernity within broader European debates on socialism and nationalism, challenging the dominant nation-centred narratives by demonstrating Ukraine’s integration into European intellectual and political discourses. Additionally, the project reconstructs Drahomanov’s intellectual networks by analysing his correspondence with European and Ukrainian thinkers, highlighting his role in shaping the Ukrainian national movement within the wider socialist and federalist traditions of 19th-century Europe.

Based on archival documents, including previously unused ones, this project examines the mass forced emigration from the Ottoman Empire resulting from the Greek Revolution of Independence (1821–1829). The aim is to study the Greek refugees' everyday life and their adaptation to new living conditions in the southern regions of the Russian Empire, specifically in Odesa, Chișinău, and the surrounding areas (modern-day Ukraine and Moldova). The objectives consist of exploring government actions in organizing special commissions to assist refugees, reviewing the activities of these institutions as instruments of Russian policy on the Greek issue, analyzing the successes and failures of refugee accommodation, and depicting the everyday lives of individuals who found themselves in difficult circumstances as refugees, inc. the conditions in their homeland that forced them to flee, family histories, and their financial and human needs in the new context. The focus is on the activities of the special commissions, created to oversee the refugees' stay: the Committee for Assistance to the Constantinople Greeks arriving in Odesa, and the Odesa and Chișinău Greek Auxiliary Commissions. The relevance of this study is underscored by the growing number of refugees due to ongoing military conflict in Europe, underlining the need for a historical retrospective on such social shifts.

The growing attention to the study of everyday history, microhistory, human emotions and personal perception of events is a characteristic feature of modern historical science. The daily life of the First World War in various aspects (refugees, economic difficulties, famine, public sentiment) became the subject of active study in Western European countries, in Poland and in Ukraine. The proposed scientific project is dedicated to one of the spheres of human life in war conditions. The subject of the study is celebration practices in conditions of total war, their peculiarities depending on the region, the state and the particular community. The main/central task is to find out exactly how the First World War changed the festive practices of the warring nations, their social and individual perception, which of these practices faded into the background, and which continued to be celebrated even despite the war situation. Attention will also be paid to regional, ethno-national and other differences in the celebration of holidays in these years. The geographical boundaries of the project will cover Ukrainian, Polish and Bulgarian lands. The basis for the implementation of the study is the involvement of so-called ego-sources (diaries, as well as memoirs, letters, etc.), as those that directly convey the public atmosphere, the emotions of the participants and the circumstances of the celebration of holidays.

What are the effects of the full-scale war on the relation between feelings of belonging to the Ukrainian political nation and to one’s own ethnic community? In this research, I am chiefly interested in identity transformations of ethnic minorities as a result of external shock. An important factor in my qualitative research is the role of the kin-state, and to what extent ethnic minorities’ political identities are shaped by the presence or absence of kin-state politics. Thus, to account for the role of kin-state politics, I want to focus on two border regions of Ukraine, which feature varying degrees of cross-border exchange between neighbouring states, their ethnic kin in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian state: Zakarpattia and Odesa Oblasts. Specifically, the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia, and the Moldovan/Romanian in Odesa. In addition, two ethnic minority groups without a kin-state will be analysed in my study for comparison - the Roma and the Crimean Tatars. First evidence suggests that the well-established Hungarian and Romanian minorities, which both feature civil society networks and organisations, facilitated cross-border communication and assistance in aid delivery by the kin-state. As the full-scale war enters its fourth year, it is worth investigating these processes to discern whether this engagement has contributed to the long-term consolidation of a civic identity among minorities.