A review by blackoxford
The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution by Yuri Slezkine
4.0
The Omphalos on the Moscva
Like Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Jerusalem, The House of Government uses a limited geography as a focus to narrate an enormously important cultural history. This is the history of what can be called eschatological faith, the belief that the race of Homo Sapiens is destined toward a definite and definable end point. The two works narrate different strands of the same history, each with a distinctive virtuosity.
It is a common trope among Christian apologists that the modern Western world is primarily a product of Christian principles and institutions. What they would like to evoke through this assertion is a respect for Christian ideals of justice, individual responsibility, and virtuous character as the basis for the modern state. Such arguments have been made at least since Chateubriand’s Romanticist attack on the free-thinking philosophes and the French Revolution in the early 19th century.
However what these apologists are hesitant in pointing out is that Christianity also inspired other social movements, fascism and communism in particular, which Christianity has found even less benign than the liberal democracy emerging from the French and American revolutions. It is this strand that Slezkine follows into the House of Government, the Vatican-like dormitory of the Soviet Union in the 1930’s and 40’s. (Called The Swamp because of its location, it curiously shares an affinity with that other hotbed of political intrigue, the similarly named Foggy Bottom in Washington D.C, home of the Watergate Hotel and the American State Department. Perhaps it also inspired Trump’s campaign pledge about ‘draining the swamp’).
Moscow, of course, was considered the New (or Third) Rome by its 15th and 16th century rulers. Whether the Roman model of church government was an inspiration for the Eastern church and the subsequent soviet system or simply an inevitable consequence of similar totalitarian ambitions, religious or secular, is moot. However, Slezkine does a brilliant job of showing how Orthodox apocalyptic sentiment was closely bound up with fin de siecle Marxist fatalism. “Millenarianism,” Slezkine points out, “... is the vengeful fantasy of the dispossessed.” What might be said of both the House of Government and the Vatican in any case is that each indeed is “... a place where revolutionaries came home, and the revolution came to die.”
Both the Christian Church and the former Soviet Union see things from the same ideological perspective - an ideal future of justice, responsibility and virtue. Agreement about this ideal state is a necessary condition for participation in both. But since the ideal is defined and maintained by authority, agreement is not a matter of either intellectual understanding or intuitive acceptance but of credal obedience. If there is conflict among these impulses, even obedience itself may not be considered sufficient to prove orthodoxy. Despite even the most vigorous personal confessions of faith, one may be found anathema if there is any doubt about ‘the law written in the heart.’ Slezkine‘s aphorism is perfect: “... to be truly intelligent meant being religious about being intelligent.”
Qui custodiet custodies, Who should watch the watchers? A perennial issue in any strictly hierarchical state. Pope Francis has the same problem today that Stalin had in the 1930’s: How to ensure obedience to his authority within a dictatorial bureaucracy. Francis’s predecessor, Pius X, faced this problem in 1907 and issued a papal fatwa against those who claimed loyalty but were nevertheless suspected of heterodox tendencies. He also established a network of secret informers and a process for secret trials that would be the envy of future totalitarian regimes. The preferred punishment was excommunication, a spiritual death sentence.
As Francis has found with his Vatican Curia today, neither directives nor cajoling, nor even a change in the cast of characters is very effective in eliminating non-compliance. The Curia, like Stalin’s nomenklatura, has a life of its own, one that it would like to keep solely as its own. Lately Francis seems to be trying a bit of spiritual terror himself by accusing his senior people of careerism and other un-virtuous activities. The effects seem limited to date. Popes come and go but the Curia is always with us.
Stalin of course didn’t operate under the constraints that are placed on today’s popes and he went well beyond spiritual terror in his attempt to control soviet government. I’m sure the popes as well as Stalin appreciate the proximity of their minions. So convenient for exercising power directly. Terror works best at close quarters. But not too close. Just as the popes since the 14th century kept a bolt-hole across the Tiber in the Castel Sant’Angelo, so Stalin remained in the Kremlin across the Moscva from the House.
The most important difference between the House and the Vatican of course is that the former was the residence of families while the latter is populated by single clerics. While many government officials keep diaries and journals, without families to treasure them, hide them, and pass them on, they end up, particularly if juicy enough, in a closed official archive or are destroyed. This is why the House is so well documented, and why it takes a thousand pages or so to recount its history over such a relatively short period.
The complex narrative works largely because Slezkine is such a master of the overall cultural story. He is able to establish the significance of the details by continuous reference to the movement of Russian and European history. For example, Russia, like the United States, is a land of educated cults. Converting from the religious to the political variety or from one radical group to another is de riguer for the activist. Slezkine’s guided tour through the cast of characters preceding the Revolution fills an enormous gap in my understanding of the historical scene.
Slezkine cuts through many points of sociological confusion. For example his controversial treatment of Russian religion as politics and vice versa is justified simply by the fact that “... most people who talk about religion do not know what it is.” This includes not only ‘believers,’ but also the law. He nicely comments on the U.S. Constitutional problem in defining religious belief to make the point: there is little functional difference between faith in Jesus or faith in Marx. A culture of faith can move fluidly between the two, as demonstrated by the re-establishment of the Orthodox Church under Putin.
Certainly one’s view of any literary work is dependent upon the expectations one brings to it. Based on the title and first chapter, one would be entitled to expect a fairly quick focus on the turbulent years of the Great Terror and the consequent tumult caused in the lives of the residents. Forget it. Slezkine is far to well-read and far too imaginative to sleight any part of his subject, which is really, I suppose world history as it appears to coalesce in Russia, in Moscow, and ultimately on the particular building of The House of Government as a sort of navel of the planet.
So for example in his review of the millenarianism which was so influential in contemporary Marxism, it is not sufficient for Slezkine to describe Russian variants, nor even those of Europe and European derivation in the Americas. He treats the reader to a rather enjoyable tour through Chinese eschatology as well. True, this kind of thing can get tedious if one is planning a timed intellectual journey between fixed points. Best therefore to adjust whatever expectations one has and simply enjoy the ride. That ride took me about a month, but I may just do it again.
Like Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Jerusalem, The House of Government uses a limited geography as a focus to narrate an enormously important cultural history. This is the history of what can be called eschatological faith, the belief that the race of Homo Sapiens is destined toward a definite and definable end point. The two works narrate different strands of the same history, each with a distinctive virtuosity.
It is a common trope among Christian apologists that the modern Western world is primarily a product of Christian principles and institutions. What they would like to evoke through this assertion is a respect for Christian ideals of justice, individual responsibility, and virtuous character as the basis for the modern state. Such arguments have been made at least since Chateubriand’s Romanticist attack on the free-thinking philosophes and the French Revolution in the early 19th century.
However what these apologists are hesitant in pointing out is that Christianity also inspired other social movements, fascism and communism in particular, which Christianity has found even less benign than the liberal democracy emerging from the French and American revolutions. It is this strand that Slezkine follows into the House of Government, the Vatican-like dormitory of the Soviet Union in the 1930’s and 40’s. (Called The Swamp because of its location, it curiously shares an affinity with that other hotbed of political intrigue, the similarly named Foggy Bottom in Washington D.C, home of the Watergate Hotel and the American State Department. Perhaps it also inspired Trump’s campaign pledge about ‘draining the swamp’).
Moscow, of course, was considered the New (or Third) Rome by its 15th and 16th century rulers. Whether the Roman model of church government was an inspiration for the Eastern church and the subsequent soviet system or simply an inevitable consequence of similar totalitarian ambitions, religious or secular, is moot. However, Slezkine does a brilliant job of showing how Orthodox apocalyptic sentiment was closely bound up with fin de siecle Marxist fatalism. “Millenarianism,” Slezkine points out, “... is the vengeful fantasy of the dispossessed.” What might be said of both the House of Government and the Vatican in any case is that each indeed is “... a place where revolutionaries came home, and the revolution came to die.”
Both the Christian Church and the former Soviet Union see things from the same ideological perspective - an ideal future of justice, responsibility and virtue. Agreement about this ideal state is a necessary condition for participation in both. But since the ideal is defined and maintained by authority, agreement is not a matter of either intellectual understanding or intuitive acceptance but of credal obedience. If there is conflict among these impulses, even obedience itself may not be considered sufficient to prove orthodoxy. Despite even the most vigorous personal confessions of faith, one may be found anathema if there is any doubt about ‘the law written in the heart.’ Slezkine‘s aphorism is perfect: “... to be truly intelligent meant being religious about being intelligent.”
Qui custodiet custodies, Who should watch the watchers? A perennial issue in any strictly hierarchical state. Pope Francis has the same problem today that Stalin had in the 1930’s: How to ensure obedience to his authority within a dictatorial bureaucracy. Francis’s predecessor, Pius X, faced this problem in 1907 and issued a papal fatwa against those who claimed loyalty but were nevertheless suspected of heterodox tendencies. He also established a network of secret informers and a process for secret trials that would be the envy of future totalitarian regimes. The preferred punishment was excommunication, a spiritual death sentence.
As Francis has found with his Vatican Curia today, neither directives nor cajoling, nor even a change in the cast of characters is very effective in eliminating non-compliance. The Curia, like Stalin’s nomenklatura, has a life of its own, one that it would like to keep solely as its own. Lately Francis seems to be trying a bit of spiritual terror himself by accusing his senior people of careerism and other un-virtuous activities. The effects seem limited to date. Popes come and go but the Curia is always with us.
Stalin of course didn’t operate under the constraints that are placed on today’s popes and he went well beyond spiritual terror in his attempt to control soviet government. I’m sure the popes as well as Stalin appreciate the proximity of their minions. So convenient for exercising power directly. Terror works best at close quarters. But not too close. Just as the popes since the 14th century kept a bolt-hole across the Tiber in the Castel Sant’Angelo, so Stalin remained in the Kremlin across the Moscva from the House.
The most important difference between the House and the Vatican of course is that the former was the residence of families while the latter is populated by single clerics. While many government officials keep diaries and journals, without families to treasure them, hide them, and pass them on, they end up, particularly if juicy enough, in a closed official archive or are destroyed. This is why the House is so well documented, and why it takes a thousand pages or so to recount its history over such a relatively short period.
The complex narrative works largely because Slezkine is such a master of the overall cultural story. He is able to establish the significance of the details by continuous reference to the movement of Russian and European history. For example, Russia, like the United States, is a land of educated cults. Converting from the religious to the political variety or from one radical group to another is de riguer for the activist. Slezkine’s guided tour through the cast of characters preceding the Revolution fills an enormous gap in my understanding of the historical scene.
Slezkine cuts through many points of sociological confusion. For example his controversial treatment of Russian religion as politics and vice versa is justified simply by the fact that “... most people who talk about religion do not know what it is.” This includes not only ‘believers,’ but also the law. He nicely comments on the U.S. Constitutional problem in defining religious belief to make the point: there is little functional difference between faith in Jesus or faith in Marx. A culture of faith can move fluidly between the two, as demonstrated by the re-establishment of the Orthodox Church under Putin.
Certainly one’s view of any literary work is dependent upon the expectations one brings to it. Based on the title and first chapter, one would be entitled to expect a fairly quick focus on the turbulent years of the Great Terror and the consequent tumult caused in the lives of the residents. Forget it. Slezkine is far to well-read and far too imaginative to sleight any part of his subject, which is really, I suppose world history as it appears to coalesce in Russia, in Moscow, and ultimately on the particular building of The House of Government as a sort of navel of the planet.
So for example in his review of the millenarianism which was so influential in contemporary Marxism, it is not sufficient for Slezkine to describe Russian variants, nor even those of Europe and European derivation in the Americas. He treats the reader to a rather enjoyable tour through Chinese eschatology as well. True, this kind of thing can get tedious if one is planning a timed intellectual journey between fixed points. Best therefore to adjust whatever expectations one has and simply enjoy the ride. That ride took me about a month, but I may just do it again.