Professor Olena Palko
Assistant Professor at the University of Basel
Olena Palko is Assistant Professor at the University of Basel.
Her current research project, 'Red Tower of Babel: Soviet minorities experiment in interwar Ukraine' aims to examine a unique minorities experiment as implemented by the Soviet government during the 1920s. It builds upon the existing scholarship to provide a unique account of the Soviet minority experiment as designed and implemented during the 1920s-early 1930s within the borders of Soviet Ukraine. Soviet Ukraine served as a trendsetting laboratory for Soviet minorities policy Union-wide. While few existing studies look at certain minority groups, this research aims to provide a first of its kind comprehensive study of the Soviet minority regime based on a variety of primary sources both from central and local archives. The Soviet minorities policies are set against the contemporary international attempts to provide protection and guarantee legal and cultural status to national minorities under the Versailles system and the League of Nations.