The House of Government is a monumental work of history centered on a single Moscow apartment building that housed the Soviet elite during the turbulent decades of revolutionary Russia. Yuri Slezkine, professor of history at UC Berkeley, reconstructs the lives of the true believers who led the Bolshevik Revolution, moved into this enormous complex overlooking the Kremlin, and were eventually consumed by the terror they helped create. The building, completed in 1931, contained over 500 apartments, multiple theaters, a grocery store, and a kindergarten—a self-contained world for Communist Party officials and their families. Slezkine treats Bolshevism as a millenarian sect, comparing its apocalyptic fervor and demands for total commitment to early Christianity and other revolutionary movements. He follows families from the underground struggles of the early 1900s through the ecstasies of revolution, the building of Soviet institutions, and the devastating purges of the 1930s when many residents were arrested, exiled, or executed. Drawing on memoirs, diaries, interviews with survivors, and archival documents, Slezkine creates an intimate portrait of ideology's human cost. The result is both a masterwork of historical research and a profound meditation on faith, betrayal, and the terrible consequences of utopian dreams.