The front cover of the book reproduces a very powerful painting and is worth looking at carefully. Dmitri Zhilinskii, the artist, painted it from memory. It depicts his own father’s arrest in 1937. Zhilinskii includes himself as a young child (on the spine of the book), standing in his underwear and watching the NKVD’s midnight search of his family’s small apartment. His father stands in the center of the painting with his hands raised in surrender. The title of the painting is “1937,” a year that is a synonym for the terror. The painting now hangs in the Tretiakov Museum in Moscow.Readers will find many gripping stories about personal relationships, dark secrets, and twisted behavior in these pages.None of the betrayals depicted here are foreign to us as human beings. I think my readers will be able to project themselves into every agonizing dilemma faced by Soviet citizens.I would suggest that a browser open the book to page 140, the first page of the chapter “Family Secrets.” Here, on this page, the reader will meet Margolina, a party member who worked in a textile factory. Margolina comes home from work one day to find a mysterious postcard in her mailbox, sent by her brother in Kharkov. The postcard contains a single, cryptic line. It states that Margolina’s married stepsister “was alone.” Margolina immediately grasps the terrifying meaning of the message, as well as its ability to upend her own life.This book is particularly relevant for anyone today who is concerned about how our own “war on terror” is affecting civil liberties.Inventing the Enemy shows that the terror in Soviet Union actually began as a series of “anti-terrorist” measures in the wake of the assassination of a popular Soviet leader, Sergei M. Kirov. These measures introduced extra judicial trials and eliminated the right to appeal for suspected terrorists. As more suspects were pulled into prison and subjected to brutal methods of interrogation, Soviet leaders became convinced of a vast conspiracy of terrorists, potential and real.The climate of fear spurred by the Kirov assassination was intensified by the growing threat of fascism abroad. Soviet leaders encouraged ordinary citizens to denounce those they suspected of disloyalty or treason. Many Soviet citizens denounced their neighbors, coworkers, and even family members.My argument—and a lesson—is that ordinary citizens helped to create a political culture that supported the abrogation of civil liberties.Yet as more and more people were arrested, many others realized that they, too, might become victims. What began as anti-terror measures in the wake of a political assassination became a true terror.Inventing the Enemy shows us how an anti terrorist campaign launched by the state can become a full blown terror in which one’s fellow citizens become rabid agents of denunciation and no one is safe.