Autobiography of Bolshevism: Between Salvation and Fall
39.99 €
31.99 €
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Autobiography of Bolshevism: Between Salvation and Fall
39.99 €
31.99 €
Bolshevism, as a quasi-religious messianic movement, aimed to radically transform society and create paradise on earth. In order to become a "new man," each of its participants had to re-shape themselves through communist ethics, to understand their flaws and overcome their doubts. A key practice of Bolshevism was analyzing one's own self - what Michel Foucault called "communist hermeneutics." Talking about one's thoughts and intentions, writing autobiographies, letters, and diaries were all intended to provide the right interpretation of one's mental life, hidden from external gaze. Halfin traces the poetics of Bolshevik ego-documents, showing how the latter embodied a narrative of movement from darkness to light and conversion to a new faith. Over time, comradeship trials and discussions of party members' "transgressions" were replaced by actual political trials in which "wrong" communists, especially Trotskyists, were declared counterrevolutionaries. Combining in his study the analysis of autobiographies with the study of communist psychology and sociology, as well as the politics of Bolshevik self-improvement, the author convincingly shows how the preconditions for the subsequent Great Terror were formed.
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