About the event: This article examines how the Soviet Union transformed Sillamäe, Estonia and its oil shale deposits from a source of national independence into a cornerstone of the Soviet nuclear weapons program. Facing critical uranium shortages and logistical challenges in Central Asian mines, Soviet authorities seized upon Estonia’s oil-shale deposits, which contained extractable uranium essential for the construction of a nuclear bomb. Within weeks after recapturing the territory in 1944, Moscow established military exclusion zones, forcibly resettled the local Estonian population, and transferred jurisdiction over Sillamäe directly to the Main Directorate of the Atomic Energy Industry, bypassing Estonian SSR authority entirely. By August 1946, Sillamäe had become a closed city under Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) control, erased from maps and accessible only with special passes. The MVD deployed forced labor to construct uranium processing facilities while simultaneously recruiting informants to monitor all residents. Through infrastructure development, population control, and an expansive security apparatus, Moscow bound Estonian territory materially and demographically to Soviet imperial power, demonstrating how nuclear colonialism operated through the deliberate engineering of both built environment and communities.

About the speaker: Dr. Alexandra Sukalo is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs and Director of the Intelligence Studies Project at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. A historian of Russia and Eastern Europe, her research focuses on Russian and Soviet intelligence services and the Soviet military-industrial complex. She is completing a manuscript on the Soviet Union’s domestic intelligence services under Stalin. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and worked as a Eurasian analyst for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and Central Intelligence Agency. She holds a PhD from Stanford University.
 

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