The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution

Product Description

The epic story of an enormous Soviet apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destructionThe House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the chilling true story of an enormous Moscow apartment building where Soviet leaders and their families lived until hundreds of these Bolshevik true believers were led, one by one, to prison or to their deaths in Stalin’s purges. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews with survivors, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, this epic story weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.

Review

“One of The Spectator 2017 Books of the Year”

“One of the Economist.com “Wise Words 2017 Books of the Year” in History”

“Honorable Mention for the 2019 Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies, Nanovic Institute, University of Notre Dame”

“Winner of the 2018 Norris and Carol Hundley Award, Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association”

“One of the Times Colonist Favorite Books of 2017 (chosen by Adrian Dix)”

“Winner of the 2018 PROSE Award in World History, Association of American Publishers”

“One of the Millions.com “A Year in Reading 2017: Stephen Dodson””

“One of World’s 2017 Books of the Year in “History””

“One of The Times Literary Supplement’s Books of the Year 2017”

“One of Open Letters Monthly’s “Our Year in Reading 2017”

Review

“Magisterial.”
―Joshua Yaffa, New Yorker

“A must-read.”
―Margaret Atwood

“An absolute delight to read . . . a masterpiece.”
―Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor

“Few historians, dead or alive, have managed to combine so spectacularly the gifts of storyteller and scholar.”
―Benjamin Nathans, New York Review of Books

“A Soviet
War and Peace.”
―Sheila Fitzpatrick, London Review of Books

“Compelling. . . . [L]ike Solzhenitsyn with photographs.”
―Tom Stoppard, Times Literary Supplement

“Brilliant.”
―Andrew Stuttaford, Wall Street Journal

From the Back Cover

“An utterly gripping masterwork. As residents of the House of Government enjoy privileged childhoods, fall in love and marry, rise to power, betray each other, and are arrested and shot, we learn about the peculiar nature of Bolshevism and get a new history of Russia. But the book’s compelling brilliance is its living organic nature–a mixture of historical narrative, novel, and family saga with echoes of Grossman, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, and even Tolstoy.”–Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
“Few books are truly visionary, but The House of Government earns this description. The cumulative effect of this massive chronicle of the Soviet era is devastating and, more important, utterly satisfying. It’s a work of art in itself, a beautifully written exploration of a central phase of modern history, and one that has never seemed as terrifyingly relevant. Tolstoy himself would have recognized Yuri Slezkine as an artist, as the author of a narrative with transmogrifying power, an epic that functions on countless levels at the same time.”–Jay Parini, author of The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy’s Final Year
“The House of Government traces the public and personal lives of residents of a unique, elite Moscow housing complex as they evolve from fanatic Bolshevik revolutionaries–dreaming of a Marxist utopia and determined to shed blood to create it–to victims of Stalin’s terror. Based on diaries, letters, memoirs, and interviews, featuring hundreds of rare photos, and combining history, biography,