The House of Government, Yuri Slezkine
The House of Government, Yuri Slezkine
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The House of Government
A Saga of the Russian Revolution

Author: Yuri Slezkine

Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki

Unabridged: 45 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/15/2017


Synopsis

On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous 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 true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union.Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths.Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.

About Yuri Slezkine

Yuri Slezkine is the Jane K. Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include The Jewish Century (Princeton), which won the National Jewish Book Award.

About Claire Bloom

Claire Bloom, CBE, is an English film and stage actress, known for leading roles in plays such as Streetcar Named Desire, A Doll’s House, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, along with nearly sixty films and countless television roles, during a career spanning over six decades. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen’s birthday honors for services to drama.

About Stefan Rudnicki

Stefan Rudnicki is an avid audiobook narrator, receiving numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine. He is also a Grammy-winning audiobook producer.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lori on July 17, 2017

Absolutely stunning. I thought this book was about an apartment building constructed for high Soviet officials (The House of Government), the people who lived there, and their fates during the purges of the 1930's and 40's. But it is so much more than that. This book is not for the faint hearted, or......more

Goodreads review by Murtaza on February 21, 2018

When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917 they believe that the arrival of Communism - envisioned as a Utopian society on earth - was a rapture that they would experience within their own lifetimes. Having apparently discovered the Laws of History and successfully marginalized the competing i......more


Quotes

“An utterly gripping masterwork…A mixture of historical narrative, novel, and family saga with echoes of Grossman, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, and even Tolstoy.” Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author

“A Soviet War and Peace." London Review of Books

“Magisterial…[An] epic that recounts the multigenerational story of the famed building and its inhabitants—and, at least as interesting, the rise and fall of Bolshevist faith.” New Yorker

“A humane masterpiece, rendering the colossal scale of Stalin’s brutality not in numbers but in individual lives and a single Moscow apartment building. There are pages I don’t think any reader will ever forget.” Guardian (London)

“This panoramic history plotted as an epic family tragedy describes the lives of Bolshevik revolutionaries who were swallowed up by the cause they believed in. The story is as intricate as any Russian novel, and the chapters on the Stalinist Terror are the most vivid.” New York Times

“This comprehensive work of scholarship and storytelling will appeal to readers with an interest in the Russian Revolution, the early Soviet Union, and the pitfalls of utopian community building.” Library Journal

“A tour de force.” Robert Service, author of Lenin: A Biography


Awards

  • Guardian Best Book of the Year
  • New York Times   Bestseller
  • New York Times Notable Book
  • Times Literary Supplement Best Book
  • Literary Hub Pick