Intimate Enemies

Praise for Igal Halfin's earlier work:"The thesis that Marxism constitutes a secular religion is hardly new . . . but historians have resisted it and Sovietologists have simply ignored it. Igal Halfin undertakes the difficult task of defending the primacy of Marxist ideology in molding the Soviet system . . . the payoff is a probing analysis of a unique culture in which party-speak itself has become a social force as potent as any material agent."

Praise for Igal Halfin's earlier work:"Igal Halfin offers a long overdue meditation on how Marxism, especially its eschatological drama of a proletarian messiah, shaped Bolshevik politics and became a discourse of power. Erudite, stimulating, and important . . . deserves to be read cover to cover and savored."

Praise for Igal Halfin's earlier work:"Halfin's is one of the first attempts to firmly root a Foucault-influenced discussion of self-fashioning in newly opened archival sources. This is an immense task, but Halfin provides us with an initial bold step in this direction . . . a remarkable book."

Impressive and original.

Igal Halfin must be counted among the most prolific young scholars in the field of Soviet studies.

A fascinating . . . read. Despite the complexity of the ideas that he presents, his willingness to reproduce living examples from the texts in order to develop his argument ensured that this reader was gripped by the unfolding evolution of language, and its corresponding unleashing of real rather than just rhetorical violence.

Provocative and interesting . . . A new interpretation of the intra-Party struggles that prepared the ground for the Great Purge. . .Most interestingly, Halfin examines in detail how intra-Party struggles were interpreted at the grass roots level.