Igal Halfin is a full professor at the Tel Aviv University History Department, where he teaches modern Russian and European history, history of the Cinema and courses in theory of the humanities. He is the author of From Darkness to Light (2000), Terror in My Soul (2003), Intimate Enemies (2007), Red Autobiographies (2011) and other books in the field of Communism studies. Beyond his specialization in early Soviet history, he is interested in historical anthropology, psychoanalysis, theory of literature, and history of the cinema. He recently published a micro-study of the Stalinist purges in Leningrad (Stalinist Confessions). Investigating NKVD materials, personal files of university leaders located in the Party archive and other archival sources the book focused on the denunciation, arrest and execution of students and professors at the Leningrad Communist universities. How the machinery of terror actually worked? What worldview imbued it with meaning and what practices led to its realization? A study of interrogations, denunciations and notoriously delirious confession through the anthropological lens offers surprising insights into these questions.
