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A review by alismcg
The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution by Yuri Slezkine
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.5
"This is a work of history. Any resemblance to fictional characters, dead or alive, is entirely coincidental." 😂
"All millenarian sects committed to poverty and fraternity are men’s movements. Bolshevism was aggressively and unabashedly masculine. Its hero was a blacksmith, énorme et gourd, and its most iconic war poster was Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. Its main enemy was the swamp and everything 'resembling jelly.' Women produced children; women and children formed families; and families 'engendered capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a massive scale.' The only women who did not threaten the rule of the iron scepter were mothers of prophets or Amazons..."
Slezkine presents Bolshevism as a millenarian sect ... I've never read anything quite like "The House of Government". How much time will it take for me to process ... that Lenin and Stalin followed in the path of an Apocalyptic Jesus ? I loved all the literary references. And I loved his conclusion of why Bolshevism failed to survive beyond the revolutionaries' own generation.
"The children of the Bolshevik millenarians never read Marx- Engels- Lenin- Stalin at home, and, after the educational system was rebuilt around Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy, all Soviet children stopped reading them in school. At home, the children of the Bolshevik millenarians read the 'treasures of world literature' ..."
Definitely worth every bit of time invested.
"All millenarian sects committed to poverty and fraternity are men’s movements. Bolshevism was aggressively and unabashedly masculine. Its hero was a blacksmith, énorme et gourd, and its most iconic war poster was Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge. Its main enemy was the swamp and everything 'resembling jelly.' Women produced children; women and children formed families; and families 'engendered capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a massive scale.' The only women who did not threaten the rule of the iron scepter were mothers of prophets or Amazons..."
Slezkine presents Bolshevism as a millenarian sect ... I've never read anything quite like "The House of Government". How much time will it take for me to process ... that Lenin and Stalin followed in the path of an Apocalyptic Jesus ? I loved all the literary references. And I loved his conclusion of why Bolshevism failed to survive beyond the revolutionaries' own generation.
"The children of the Bolshevik millenarians never read Marx- Engels- Lenin- Stalin at home, and, after the educational system was rebuilt around Pushkin, Gogol, and Tolstoy, all Soviet children stopped reading them in school. At home, the children of the Bolshevik millenarians read the 'treasures of world literature' ..."
Definitely worth every bit of time invested.