Inventing the Enemy uses stories of personal relationships to explore the behavior of ordinary people during Stalin\'s terror.
Inventing the Enemy, a history of the Terror in five Moscow factories, explores personal relationships and individual behavior within a pervasive political culture of "enemy hunting.".
The strategies that people used to protect themselves - naming names, preemptive denunciations, and shifting blame - all helped to spread the terror.
Work places were turned into snake pits.
Forced to lie to protect loved ones, they struggled to reconcile political imperatives and personal loyalties.
People confronted hideous dilemmas.
Spouses, coworkers, friends, and relatives disavowed and denounced each other.
By 1937, every work place was convulsed by hyper-vigilance, intense suspicion, and the hunt for hidden enemies.
Communist Party leaders targeted specific groups for arrest, but also strongly encouraged ordinary citizens and party members to "unmask the hidden enemy." People responded by flooding the secret police and local authorities with accusations.
Inventing the Enemy uses stories of personal relationships to explore the behavior of ordinary people during Stalin\'s terror
