In the heart of Moscow, just a stone's throw from the Kremlin, stands a monument not only to architecture but to the very soul of the Soviet experiment: The House of Government. Yuri Slezkine's magnum opus weaves a narrative as complex and captivating as the lives of its inhabitants, the Bolshevik elite who envisioned a communist utopia. This monumental work, reminiscent of the grandeur found in Tolstoy and the depth of Solzhenitsyn, charts the rise and fall of these revolutionaries from fervent believers in the cause to victims of its ultimate betrayal. Through the intimate lens of personal letters, diaries, and haunting photographs, Slezkine embarks on a literary excavation, unearthing the story of a building that mirrored the fate of a nation, from its heady beginnings to its disillusioned end. "The House of Government" is not merely a history but an epic that stands at the intersection of personal and political, encapsulating the tragic arc of the Soviet Union itself. As the narrative unfolds, so does the fabric of the lives within the House's walls, from their ideological fervor to their tragic downfall in the purges that swept like a storm through Stalin's Russia. Slezkine's work is a testament to the power of belief and the price of idealism, set against the backdrop of one of history's most ambitious yet flawed experiments in social engineering. It is a story of a haunted house, whose corridors echo with the ghosts of dreams unfulfilled and lives cut short, a poignant reminder of the human cost of political ambition.