By 1938, the definition of the “enemy” had become sufficiently elastic to accommodate almost everyone and anyone. Beginning with the dekulakization campaign in 1929 and continuing through the urban sweeps of “socially harmful elements” in the early 1930s, the attack on former oppositionists after the Kirov murder in 1934, and the mass arrests of suspect groups in 1937–38, the meaning of the term had steadily expanded to cover social, political, associational, and national categories. The ever-lengthening list included former left and right oppositionists; industrial “wreckers”; former kulaks, priests, nobles, and White Guards; criminal recidivists; wives of “enemies”; foreign Communists living in the Soviet Union; and immigrants from hostile border states. Nor were these groups discretely demarcated. The definition of “enemy” also stretched to encompass relatives, friends, coworkers, and associates of the victims. People targeted by the mass and national operations also turned out to be parents, siblings, and partners of loyal party members. However much the Soviet government sought to sort the population into neat categories of “enemy” and “friend,” identity proved far too complex to contain: individuals had multiple identities, and associational and family ties bound disparate groups. No one, in the end, was unsuited for the magically capacious category of “enemy,” which grew over time to embrace even the “purest” and most faithful of party members. Local party organizations in effect devoured themselves.