In this Book

  • The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
  • Book
  • Yuri Slezkine
  • 2017
  • Published by: Princeton University Press
    • Viewed
    • View Citation
buy this book Buy This Book in Print
summary

On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction

The 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, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, 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.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Title, Copyright, Epigraph
  2. pp. i-viii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. ix-x
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface
  2. pp. xi-xvi
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. xvii-xviii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Book One | En Route
  1. Part I | Anticipation
  1. 1. The Swamp
  2. pp. 3-20
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 2. The Preachers
  2. pp. 21-70
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 3. The Faith
  2. pp. 71-116
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part II | Fulfillment
  1. 4. The Real Day
  2. pp. 119-155
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 5. The Last Battle
  2. pp. 156-177
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 6. The New City
  2. pp. 178-217
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 7. The Great Disappointment
  2. pp. 218-269
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 8. The Party Line
  2. pp. 270-310
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Book Two | At Home
  1. Part III | the Second Coming
  2. pp. 313-314
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 9. The Eternal House
  2. pp. 315-374
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 10. The New Tenants
  2. pp. 375-405
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 11. The Economic Foundations
  2. pp. 406-418
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 12. The Virgin Lands
  2. pp. 419-451
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 13. The Ideological Substance
  2. pp. 452-476
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part IV | the Reign of the Saints
  1. 14. The New Life
  2. pp. 479-505
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 15. The Days Off
  2. pp. 506-532
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 16. The Houses of Rest
  2. pp. 533-549
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 17. The Next of Kin
  2. pp. 550-579
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 18. The Center of the World
  2. pp. 580-607
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 19. The Pettiness of Existence
  2. pp. 608-620
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 20. The Thought of Death
  2. pp. 621-642
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 21. The Happy Childhood
  2. pp. 643-662
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 22. The New Men
  2. pp. 663-692
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Book Three | On Trial
  1. Part V | the Last Judgment
  1. 23. The Telephone Call
  2. pp. 697-712
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 24. The Admission of Guilt
  2. pp. 713-750
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 25. The Valley of the Dead
  2. pp. 751-770
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 26. The Knock on the Door
  2. pp. 771-810
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 27. The Good People
  2. pp. 811-837
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 28. The Supreme Penalty
  2. pp. 838-868
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Part VI | the Afterlife
  1. 29. The End of Childhood
  2. pp. 871-884
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 30. The Persistence of Happiness
  2. pp. 885-909
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 31. The Coming of War
  2. pp. 910-921
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 32. The Return
  2. pp. 922-943
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 33. The End
  2. pp. 944-958
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Epilogue: The House on the Embankment
  2. pp. 959-980
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Appendix: Partial List of Leaseholders
  2. pp. 981-992
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Notes
  2. pp. 993-1080
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 1081-1102
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top