Description
Inventing the Enemy uses stories of personal relationships to explore the behaviour of ordinary people during Stalin's terror. Communist Party leaders strongly encouraged ordinary citizens and party members to 'unmask the hidden enemy' and people responded by flooding the secret police and local authorities with accusations. By 1937, every workplace was convulsed by hyper-vigilance, intense suspicion and the hunt for hidden enemies. Spouses, co-workers, friends and relatives disavowed and denounced each other. People confronted hideous dilemmas. Forced to lie to protect loved ones, they struggled to reconcile political imperatives and personal loyalties. Workplaces were turned into snake pits. The strategies that people used to protect themselves - naming names, pre-emptive denunciations, and shifting blame - all helped to spread the terror. Inventing the Enemy, a history of the terror in five Moscow factories, explores personal relationships and individual behaviour within a pervasive political culture of 'enemy hunting'.
Explores the behaviour of ordinary people during Stalin's terror, revealing the terrible dilemmas people confronted in their struggles to survive.
About the Author
Wendy Z. Goldman is Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. She has contributed articles to numerous edited collections and journals, including Slavic Review and the American Historical Review. She is also the author of several books, including Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin's Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy in Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Reviews
'... essential reading for understanding crucial questions about different levels of responsibility during the Great Terror and how it was not only the Soviet elite, but groups of ordinary people, who actively engaged in their own destruction.' Peter Whitewood, Slavonic and East European Review
Book Information
ISBN 9780521145626
Author Wendy Z. Goldman
Format Paperback
Page Count 334
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 480g
Dimensions(mm) 226mm * 152mm * 25mm
Explores the behaviour of ordinary people during Stalin's terror, revealing the terrible dilemmas people confronted in their struggles to survive.
About the Author
Wendy Z. Goldman is Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. She has contributed articles to numerous edited collections and journals, including Slavic Review and the American Historical Review. She is also the author of several books, including Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin's Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy in Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Reviews
'... essential reading for understanding crucial questions about different levels of responsibility during the Great Terror and how it was not only the Soviet elite, but groups of ordinary people, who actively engaged in their own destruction.' Peter Whitewood, Slavonic and East European Review
Book Information
ISBN 9780521145626
Author Wendy Z. Goldman
Format Paperback
Page Count 334
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 480g
Dimensions(mm) 226mm * 152mm * 25mm
