Promotional Information

Studies admission records to Soviet Communist party cells in the 1920s for what they reveal about the politics of self-representation in Bolshevik political culture

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Party Admissions in Paranoid Times

2. Workers Toward the Light

3. Peasant Enrollment

4. The Intelligentsia

Conclusion

Appendix: The Case of Fiodor Fiodorovich Raskol'nikov: Bolshevick Authobiographies Across the 1917 Divide

About the Author

Igal Halfin is a professor of modern history in Tel Aviv University.

Reviews

". . . Halfin's first-rate readings of this material makes for very compelling reading." - Auri C. Berg (Canadian Slavonic Papers) "Using as his main source autobiographies written by people who wanted to join the Bolshevik party during the initial postrevolutionary years, Halfin demonstrates how these Bosheviks-to-be learned to narrate their lives in the language of the new political regime." - Serguei Oushakine (The Russian Review) ". . . [Halfin] consistently provides analytically rich, theoretically challenging and inspiring works. To dismiss his penetrating and creative revisionism is to suffer from a more intellectually debilitating form of myopia." - Sean Guillory (The NEP Era: Soviet Russia 1921-1928)