{"product_id":"terror-in-my-soul-igal-halfin-9780674010321","title":"Terror in My Soul: Communist Autobiographies on Trial","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this innovative and revelatory work, Igal Halfin exposes the inner struggles of Soviet Communists to identify themselves with the Bolshevik Party during the decisive decades of the 1920s and 1930s. The Bolsheviks preached the moral transformation of Russians into model Communists for their political and personal salvation. To screen the population for moral and political deviance, the Bolsheviks enlisted natural scientists, doctors, psychologists, sexologists, writers, and Party prophets to establish criteria for judging people. Self-inspection became a central Bolshevik practice. Communists were expected to write autobiographies in which they reconfigured their life experience in line with the demands of the Party. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHalfin traces the intellectual contortions of this project. Initially, the Party denounced deviant Communists, especially the Trotskyists, as degenerate, but innocuous, souls; but in a chilling turn in the mid-1930s, the Party came to demonize the unreformed as virulent, malicious counterrevolutionaries. The insistence that the good society could not triumph unless every wicked individual was destroyed led to the increasing condemnation of Party members as helplessly flawed. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eCombining the analysis of autobiography with the study of Communist psychology and sociology and the politics of Bolshevik self-fashioning, Halfin gives us powerful new insight into the preconditions of the bloodbath that was the Great Purge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Igal Halfin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0674010329\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780674010321\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Harvard University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/30\/2003\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 366\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.43lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.74h x 6.60w x 1.22d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 07\/01\/2003 pg. 103","brand":"Igal Halfin","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47637144830207,"sku":"9780674010321","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_3a873982-89ce-4e83-ac3a-c64ce3b80a35.jpg?v=1765114207","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/terror-in-my-soul-igal-halfin-9780674010321","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}