The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies is pleased to announce that Justina Smalkytė has been awarded the 2026-2027 Journal of Baltic Studies Publication Development Grant to support her research on Jewish defendants tried in Soviet-occupied Lithuania.
The JBS Publication Development Grant of up to $7,000 supports completion of a specific academic publication, such as a journal article, book chapter in an edited volume, or book manuscript. The grant supports costs related to (field) research and writing up a publication in any field of Baltic Studies, intended to be published in a Taylor & Francis journal/ Routledge book series.
Applications were evaluated by a committee consisting of AABS Vice-President for Publications Dr. Diana Mincyte, AABS President Dr. Jörg Hackmann, and AABS Director-at-Large Dr. Dovilė Budrytė. Learn about the other 2026-2027 recipients here.
Justina Smalkytė, PhD, is a scholar of Central and Eastern Europe, mass violence, the Holocaust, the Second World War and its aftermath. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Paris School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS), where she works on a collective project funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) examining the aftermath of the Second World War in the western borderlands of the Soviet Union. Her research draws on methodologies and approaches from material culture studies, microhistory, historical anthropology, the history of the body, and gender history. In 2025, she was awarded the Auschwitz Foundation–Jacques Rozenberg Dissertation Prize for her PhD thesis, Places, Objects, and Bodies: A Material History of Anti-Nazi Resistance in German-Occupied Lithuania (1941–1944). Her recent publications focus on political and ethnic violence in German-occupied Lithuania, Holocaust materialities, as well as memory politics and postcolonial discourse in post-1990 Lithuania.
Project Overview
The Journal of Baltic Studies Publication Development Grant will support archival research and writing for an article tentatively titled “From Survivors to Defendants: Holocaust Trauma, Restitution of Jewish Property, and Stalinist Justice in Early Postwar Lithuania, 1940s.” Drawing on a selected number of criminal cases involving Jewish defendants tried in Soviet Lithuania between 1947 and 1949 for property damage, theft, and “crimes against socialist property,” the project examines the intersections of Holocaust trauma and memory, shifting property regimes, local conflicts and social tensions surrounding Sovietization and anti-Soviet resistance. The project approaches trial testimonies as public narratives of the self that were shaped not only by the courtroom setting but also by the broader social and political environment, including ongoing local tensions exacerbated by Soviet occupation and forced Sovietization. In particular, this microhistorical study focuses on criminal cases involving Holocaust survivors turned defendants after attempting to reclaim their property and personal belongings outside official legal restitution procedures. Through these cases, the article investigates the workings of Stalinist justice in early Soviet Lithuania from the perspective of postwar political and social conflicts in post-Holocaust local communities. The archival foundation of this research includes records from People’s Courts; documents from local Soviet executive committees; restitution case files involving Holocaust survivors; and materials from the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Court of Soviet Lithuania. Together, these sources will illuminate both the legal framework governing the restitution of Jewish property and prosecutions for “crimes against socialist property,” as well as the implementation of these policies at the local level through People’s Courts.
– Justina Smalkytė