The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution is a 2017 study of the history of the Russian Revolution, the formation of the Soviet Union, and its early history from the days of the New Economic Policy into the early days of Stalinist Rule by the Russian-born American historian Yuri Slezkine. The book consists of "three strains": "The first is a family saga involving numerous named and unnamed residents of the House of Government." The second strain is analytical. It looks at the revolution and subsequent Soviet administration through the lens of the millenarian cult and "aims to capture the rise and fall of Bolshevism through a building and its residents, via a study in eschatology – the creation of an apocalyptic cult, its unexpected success, and its equally unexpected failure." "The third strain is literary...Each episode in the Bolshevik Family Saga, and each stage in the history of the Bolshevik prophecy is accompanied by a discussion of the literary works that sought to interpret and mythologize them."
Contents
The work includes a brief preface, three books, an epilogue, an appendix providing "a partial list of leaseholders", notes, and an index.
Book 1: En Route
Part I: Anticipation
The Swamp - A portrait of Moscow prior to the construction of The House of Government, before the Bolshevik Revolution. "When Will The Real Day Finally Come?" asks Nikolai Dobroliubov in an 1860 essay, pondering the proximity of a revolutionary transformation of society. This question--and "The Real Day"--become a motif.
The Preachers - "Most prophets of the Real Day were either Christians or socialists."
The Faith - Slezkine outlines the senses in which it is helpful to consider the Bolshevik Revolution and its subsequent manifestations as millenarian cult.
The Last Battle - Chaos and struggle after the early victories. The attempted assassination of V. Lenin, problems with the cossacks, de-cossackization etc.
The New City - Having won the war, taken over the state, established stable administrative hierarchies the Bolsheviks reflect and prophecy, but real events deviate from prophecy very quickly as "War Communism"--the war on property, market, money and the division of labor--quickly exhausts itself in the pre-industrial, peasant economy the Bolsheviks become heir to.
The Great Disappointment - New theories of art and literature evolve under the New Economic Policy, Lenin dies, Mayakovsky commits suicide, "the NEP was a gothic nightmare."
The Party Line - As the world socialist revolution continues not to materialize, the Party re-assesses and its theory evolves.
The book received critical praise for its epic scope and storytelling from several outlets, including The New Yorker and The Washington Times. The New York Times and the London Review of Books, while concurring on praise for its exploration of the house's inhabitants, questioned some of Slezkine's conclusions, and The Guardian criticized the book's interpretation of Bolshevism.
