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The House of Government cover art

The House of Government

By: Yuri Slezkine,Claire Bloom - director
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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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 800 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.

©2017 Yuri Slezkine (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about The House of Government

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Well researched but lacks structure or narrative

This is an extremely well researched book about living during the Russian revolution, and it includes hundreds of overlapping stories, following citizens from the start of the Russian revolution on. But unless you are already well-versed with the subject matter, this book remains opaque and shapeless, as the narrator does not take very much time to outline events or explain the reasoning behind what is included, or to draw conclusions from the primary material collected here.

The author jumps from theory to theory – the main thesis being a reading of the Russian revolution as a modern millenarian cult – and while this starts strong, no simple narrative of the revolution is developed on which to hang these theories. Large events, like the details of the revolution itself, are skimmed over or in some places skipped altogether, in favour of detailed extracts from letters, plays, novels et cetera. The book has a funny structure in which about a third is a series of excerpts from poems, plays and novels of the time – interesting as a way of giving flavour to the events, but I think they would make much more sense in text, where you could skim over them, or at least easily distinguish between what is quotation and what the narrator.

There is so much reading of these extracts from primary material that it becomes easy to lose any sense of authorial intention at all – once, about 11 hours into the book, the author reaches the house of government itself, the narrative plunges into several hours of letters between various inhabitants complaining about one another, asking for holiday time or funds for new coats, et cetera – all of which is laudable research but there is no serious effort to shape it into an overall narrative, or to draw strong conclusions about what this primary material adds up to. It's more showing you first-hand what life is like in this situation than a description.

In short this felt more to me like a scholastic exercise than a non-fiction work for a lay reader. Unless you already know the main players and history of the revolution intimately, and are eager for substantial primary material about the day to day lives of those involved, you may not enjoy this book.

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9 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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It's like listening to an encyclopedia!

This is a massive tome - I took one look at the physical book and immediately plumped for the Audible version! The book presents Soviet Russia through the lens of the House of Government - Boris Iofan's housing block built in the 20s for Soviet mid-ranking high-ups. It was particularly ravaged in the Terror, roughly the period 1934-7.

But on Audible it is still a whopper of a book and there is not really a driving narrative. At 46hrs it did take me over a month to get through. It is like listening to a series of interesting articles a format that does give it a bit of a put-downable quality. I also think the physical book / e-book version has quite a few photos in - of people and places - which I think would have helped me navigate around the mass of information.

Overall, It can be bitty, episodic, and confusing (some effort is required to piece together an overall narrative). But, it's all in there somewhere and I can genuinely say that I learned a lot! I learned about various Soviet ideas on architecture, work (lots of it), marriage (sounds chaotic!), business networking, literature (a big theme in the book), individual ambitions, collect loyalties, childhood hobbies - not to mention the biographical details of a number of residents of the House of Government. The author would list the names here - there's a lot of listing in there.

The stand out bit, for me, was the sections on Soviet emotions and attitudes. The residents seemed genuinely invested in the Soviet system, even as it turned against so many of the residents in the House of Government. The author explains the excitement and shows what the Soviet system gave its people. The lives of some of the children are followed - from their enthusiasms, friendships and ambitions to their later lives of privilege or most often suffering, orphanhood and Gulag. But even here they are loyal and in the kind treatment many received in dire conditions that loyalty was rewarded. This was really touching.

I am really pleased I read/heard all this because it was different enough from other books I had read on the subject. I got a more rounded sense of what life might have felt like and why. I imagine if I listen back again I will notice more things and get even more out of it. But i will have to build up my stamina reserves first!

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Perfect story perfectly ruined (for me)

I am only 3 chapters into the book, but the story is totally captivating, and I am looking forward to the rest of it. But I am also returning this audio version and buying the physical book instead. I am quite used to certain 'Anglicizing' of Russian proper names, but I was not remotely prepared to the total butchering of Russian toponyms, last names, and even first names (!) as delivered by this narrator. Half the names are barely recognizable (and I am familiar with virtually all characters), even stress is often on the wrong syllable. May not be such a big deal for some, as long as they can still follow the story.

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Remarkable

Absolutely tremendous book. so wide ranging that probably impossible to agree with everything. However, I think this is a must.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

different to the usual accounts of the revolution

The narrative style will be familiar to those who enjoy russian literature, a cast of thousands with seemingly minor characters sometimes appearing later in a main role. Best of all is the detail, read something else if you are new to the subject, but for those who have an interest already this will be most rewarding, avoiding the usual linear retellings, well worn anecdotes and Stalin or Tsar fixation

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