This important book was a massive undertaking for the writer and the reader; it is hard to know where to begin and what to emphasize. It is about the same size as "War and Peace” and it takes a dedicated reader to absorb all the information the author has compiled. I put it down and took it up over the course of two months. Slezkine has set out to write a history of the rise of Bolshevism and the history of the Russian Revolution by structuring the story around one building in Moscow, the massive apartment house which became known as the House on the Embankment.
The section of the book I enjoyed the most was reading about the early years of the Bolshevik movement. Like much revolutionary thought, it began with young intellectuals, members of the class which eventually was overthrown as the movement took hold, and morphed into something entirely different. The writings of Karl Marx were not particularly popular in Russia at the turn of the century, rather the early meetings took a millenarian cultish approach, religious in their Utopian idealism. Early leaders of the movement hoped to inspire the oppressed peasant population to revolt against the Tzar and ruling classes, but it wasn’t until the equally oppressed working classes in the cities became fired up that Bolshevism took hold. By that time the party was in the hands of Lenin, Sverdlov, and eventually Stalin.
After World War I, Bolshevik philosophy began to spread to other countries, but never took hold the way it did in Russia. Five years after Lenin claimed the name USSR, the building of the House on the Embankment began. It was a time of rapid industrialization. Boris Iofan, the architect, planned a building that eventually held 505 apartments and housed over two thousand tenants. A muddy island area of Moscow, known as “the swamp” and home to a number of factories, was chosen for his grand design. I found it amazing that this large labyrinthine building housed so many things that we think of as modern today. The building was completed in 1931. It was like a town within a building. Besides apartments, there was a theater, a cinema, workout areas and a pool, restaurants, childcare services, a health clinic, hairdressers and barbers. It married convenience with housing and was a wonder of its age or any age. As Bolshevism morphed into the totalitarian communist party which ruled the country through the 30s and onward, the apartments were reserved for the top members of the bureaucracy, the party elites, even Khrushchev lived there when he was a rising star.
During Stalin’s years of thuggish dictatorship, the occupants were cushioned and isolated from the reality of the outside world and the starving masses during Stalin’s failing 5 year plans. And then during the long years of political purges, reality hit home and the tenants came and went in the madness of a revolving door of arrests and power changes. During those years, some 800 occupants disappeared, arrested during the night, never to be seen again.
Eventually World War II and the German invasions took their toll, the building survived, but its occupants were not so exclusive. Then after the fall of the Soviet Union near the turn of the century, the House of Government had a make over and the newly rich moved in renovating the apartments and turning them into condominiums. It is wondrous that so much history survived and some families are still decedents of original tenants. It is still a desirable place to live and many apartments look down on a square that is famous for demonstrations.
The wealth of information and breath of research in this book makes it one of a kind. It is an important book but not one read for pleasure. It is a great resource and an important addition to one’s library.
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