Molly Pucci

About

Molly Pucci was a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Molly Pucci is assistant professor of 20th-century history at Trinity College Dublin. She graduated with an MA in Russian, East European, and Central Asian studies from Harvard University and a PhD in history from Stanford University. She has held fellowships in Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic. Her work looks at the intersection of security institutions, war, law, language, and communism in multiple countries of Eastern Europe during the foundational years of communism in the region. Her recent book Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe was published in the Yale-Hoover series on authoritarian regimes in June 2020. It examines the history of early secret police forces in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War and delves into the ways their origins diverged from the original Soviet model, based on differing interpretations of communism and local histories.