House of Government

millenarian sectarians preparing for the apocalypse in a Moscow apartment block

Moscow. Dom na Naberezhnoi building - THE HOUSE OF GOVERNMENT—‘the House on the Embankment’

It included a library

In The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution Yuri Slezkine tells the story of the grey 12-storeyed constructivist bulk of a residential block completed in 1931 —the largest apartment building in the world on the banks of the Moskva River. It had nearly 600 apartments. It also included a library, a tennis court, a cinema, swimming pool and a theatre.¹

Slezkine sets out to understand the Bolsheviks dwelling in The House of Government as ‘millenarian sectarians preparing for the apocalypse’, and traces the fate of their ‘failed prophecy.’ He explores that, for many of the Party members inhabiting the House of Government, the revolution did take on the role of a religion.

In 1935, ‘the House of Government’, had 2,665 registered tenants (including 588 children), of whom 700 were state and party officials.

It is most known as the place of residence of the Soviet elite, many of whom were arrested and executed during Stalin's Great Purge. Some called it “The House of Preliminary Detention."

Of course I was drawn to the fact it had a library but I couldn’t find out much about it.

1. SLEZKINE, YURI. The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution. Princeton University Press, 2017.