Yuri Slezkine

Yuri Slezkine is a Russian-American historian and one of the most original and ambitious scholars of modern Russian and Soviet history. He is the Jane K. Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, and has been recognised internationally for works that combine deep archival research with sweeping narrative vision. His book The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution is a monumental work that tells the story of the Bolshevik revolution and the Soviet experiment through the lives of the residents of a single building, the massive apartment complex built in Moscow in the late 1920s to house the Soviet elite. The book weaves together personal stories, political history, and literary analysis to create an extraordinarily rich portrait of an era defined by utopian ambition and devastating betrayal. Slezkine is also the author of The Jewish Century, which argued that the modern age has been shaped by Jewish experience and that the qualities associated with Jewish life, including mobility, literacy, and urban professionalism, became the defining features of modernity itself. The book won multiple awards and sparked significant scholarly debate. His works are available in both print and audiobook formats, with the audiobook edition of The House of Government bringing this epic narrative to listeners who appreciate deeply researched historical non-fiction. The audio format suits Slezkine's storytelling approach, which combines the sweep of a novel with the rigour of scholarship. He continues to teach and write at Berkeley.