Introducing HIDE’s new work Indigenous Christianity: Missionaries, Modernity, and Marginality in the Siberian Tundra by Tatiana Vagramenko. This book extends the scope of the History Declassified project by adding a deeply ethnographic dimension, tracing the origins and social foundations of Putin’s regime in one of the world’s most remote regions. This book traces the story of a Nenets indigenous community in Siberia and how their lives were transformed by religious conversion in post-Soviet and Putin’s Russia. Based on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in a region now largely closed to outsiders, it offers an intimate account of faith, power, and endurance in one of the Arctic’s most marginalized communities.

Long shaped by Russian colonialism and Soviet modernization, the Nenets experienced sweeping evangelical conversions in the mid-1990s, leading to the creation of a tundra church. Amid Putin’s tightening control and persecutions, the book follows Nenets and missionaries navigating tensions between faith, state, and tradition. Through stories of hope, loss, and resilience, it shows how global evangelical Christianity reshapes kinship, belonging, and modernity in the Siberian tundra.

Thanks to the vision and leadership of the HIDE team, University College Cork (UCC) has joined the Global Coalition for Ukrainian Studies, becoming one of the first Irish institutions committed to embedding Ukrainian history, politics, society, language, and culture into research and teaching. From the initial application to coordinating the partnership and the visit of First Lady Olena Zelenska, the HIDE team were the founding initiators of this achievement.

The official signing ceremony took place at the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation with First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska and Minister James Lawless. UCC was represented by VP Global, Professor Ursula Kilkelly, Professor James Kapaló, and Dr Tatiana Vagramenko.

The HIDE project was awarded Religious Heritage Innovator of the Year by Future for Religious Heritage (a network supported by the European Commission’s Creative Europe Programme) for our initiative Saving Ukraine’s Religious Heritage: Digitization and Preservation of Endangered Minority Archives.

We are excited to announce the release of “The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents: Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR,” edited by Tatiana Vagramenko and Nadezhda Beliakova. Published by Lexington Books in 2025, this book is one of the key outcomes of the HIDE Project. 

The Lives of Soviet Secret Agents explores the covert world of secret police surveillance within the Soviet Union, delving into lesser-known grassroots religious life and the collusion of religious communities with the Soviet secret police. This book reconstructs the stories of insider agents, focusing on the entanglements and ambiguities of collaboration and secret police surveillance in the Soviet era.  

HIDE received the Impact Case Study Narrative Prize, recognizing its important role in preserving endangered archives and advancing digital conservation efforts that address urgent societal and historical challenges. 

HIDE has been awarded funding by the UCLA Library under the Modern Endangered Archives Programme for the initiative “Saving Vulnerable Past in Wartime: Local Archives in Bucha, Ukraine.” This pilot project focuses on rescuing and preparing for digitization two community archives in Bucha: the Adventist Archive-Museum and the Makariv Archive.

HIDE Project Principal Investigator, Dr. Tatiana Vagramenko, has been honored with the Best Early-Career Researcher of the Year Award at University College Cork.

Principal Investigator Dr. Tatiana Vagramenko participated in the book launch for Dispossession: Anthropological Perspectives on Russia’s War Against Ukraine, edited by Catherine Wanner (Routledge, 2023). The event was organised by Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University and available online.

Vagramenko’s contribution to the book, titled “Faith and war: Grassroots Ukrainian Protestantism in the context of the Russian invasion,” is available online here.

PI Dr. Tatiana Vagramenko and Dr. Anca Șincan of the Romanian Academy of Sciences discuss how the secret police archives represent underground religious life. What do they tell us? And what are their limitations? Published on the Eurasian Knot podcast.