Intimate Enemies: Demonizing the Bolshevik Opposition, 1918-1928

Intimate Enemies is a brilliant study of the transformation of Bolshevik Party ideology, language, and power relations during the crucial period leading up to Stalin's seizure of power. Combining extensive research in recently opened Soviet archives with an insightful rereading of intra-Party struggles, Igal Halfin uncovers this evolution in the language of Bolshevism. This language defined the methods for judging true party loyalty-in what Halfin describes as an examination of the 'hermeneutics of the soul, ' and became the basis for prosecuting the Party's enemies, particularly the "intimate enemies" within the Party itself. Halfin argues that Bolshevism-which claimed sole access to truth and morality-ultimately demonized its enemies, and became in effect a theology that facilitated a monumental power shift.

Author: Igal Halfin
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 04/27/2007
Pages: 432
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.29lbs
Size: 9.25h x 6.34w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780822959526

About the Author
Igal Halfin is professor of history at Tel Aviv University. He is the author or editor of From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia, Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial, and Language and Revolution: The Making of Modern Political Identities.