Yuri Slezkine
University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)
FA-54424-09
Fellowships for University Teachers
Research Programs
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[Grant products][Prizes]
Totals:
$42,000 (approved)
$42,000 (awarded)
Grant period:
9/1/2009 – 6/30/2010
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Moscow's House of Government, 1928-1938
Across the Moscow River from the Kremlin stands a huge gray building known as the House of Government, the House on the Embankment, or the House of the Dead. Built during the First Five-Year Plan as a model of the "Communist organization of daily life" and a shelter for top government officials, poets laureate, and Red Army commanders, it became the most coveted and most dreaded "living space" in Stalin's Russia. I would like to write a history of the first ten years of its existence--as an examination of the physical structure itself; as a collective biography (historical ethnography) of the people inside; and as a metaphor for the life and death of the first generation of Soviet rulers (and the Russian Revolution).
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