Stalinist Confessions: Messianism and Terror at the Leningrad Communist University (Pitt Russian East European)
“Halfin's work focuses on one institution, the Communist University in Leningrad, through the maelstrom of the Great Purges. Through one discrete social and political setting, Halfin provides a “thick description” of the Great Terror, from student party cells to party leaders' dachas to the execution rooms in the basements of NKVD buildings. At its core, this book examines the procedures of the purge and what it meant to its participants on both sides of the interrogation table. This is a seminal study and a major contribution to understanding one of the most disputed and puzzling events in modern history.”—Peter Holquist, University of Pennsylvania“In this study of the Great Purges, [Halfin’s] examination of  Stalinist language and ideolog do much to deepen our understanding of  this extemely disturbing and perplexing event.”—Slavic Review“[Halfin] paints a vivid picture of a narrow but significant slice of the Terror . . . A valuable work on the dynamics of fear.”—American Historical Review “Culminating Halfin's pathbreaking work on the political culture of  Soviet Communism, this book offers a fundamentally new reading of the  Stalinist purges. Halfin takes seriously the eschatological orientation  informing the Communist project. Drawing on secret NKVD interrogation  files, he presents the purges as a moral reckoning and final judgment.  Halfin's achievement is immense: he effectively unravels what used to be  called the mystery of the Stalinist purges.”—Jochen Hellbeck, Rutgers University“An important contribution to the scholarly understanding of perhaps the least explained phenomenon in Russia’s modern history, the upsurge of mass political violence during the late 1930s, widely known as the Great Terror. . . . In particular, the book is a step forward in eludicating the intellectual and linguistic dimensions of the terror—a complex and challenging field, in which Halfin has done significant work.”—The Russian Review