This is the House on the Embankment. After the Revolution, when the Bolsheviks moved the capital back to Moscow, Boris Iofan was commissioned to design an apartment building that could be a home for the leaders of the world's first Communist society. It was meant to be more than a simple residence: it was a blueprint for how the new socialist family was to live.
In 1934, Politburo member Sergei Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad, and the Great Purge began. Many of the Old Bolsheviks who served as its architects and executors lived here. Between 1936-1940 almost every single one of them eventually awoke to a knock on his own door and disappeared into a Black Volga. In total, over 800 residents were killed, imprisoned, or sent to the GULAG. Most of their children, the first generation of Soviet elite born under socialism, died at the front during the disastrous first months of the war -- a bloodbath caused in no small part because all the competent Red Army officers had been purged.
A handful of residents survived. These included Yuri Trifonov, the writer whose novel gave the house its current name. His widow runs a small museum out of a first floor flat in the left tower. For 150 ₽, you can look at the everyday objects, furniture, and photographs that could, perhaps, have been part of a different story; a story where the first real attempt to create a society where economic plenty was distributed to all and nations of all sizes were given room to flourish in harmony didn't end in madness and paranoia and despair.
I am indebted to Yuri Slezkine's remarkable 2017 book "The House of Government" for introducing me to this building and its stories. It is no exaggeration to say that it is one of the most profound literary and historical works of the decade. If you have a free six months and want to understand What Went Wrong, you should read it.
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