Yuri Slezkine - The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution — in conversation with Kathleen Smith
The House of Government, located just across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, was the largest apartment building in Europe when it was completed in 1931. It housed many of the most powerful Bolshevik leaders until, little by little, some 800 of them were ousted in Stalin’s purges. Using this unofficial government headquarters as the lens for viewing the Russian Revolution, Slezkine, author of The Jewish Century, draws on a wide range of diaries, letters, and rare photographs to trace the effect of ideology on individuals and their families. He also interweaves biography, architectural history, literary criticism, and millennial prophecies to present new theories of revolution.
Slezkine will be in conversation with Dr. Kathleen Smith, one of the leading US experts on domestic politics and historical memory issues in Russia and a professor at Georgetown University.
