Yuri Slezkine
Yuri Slezkine | |
|---|---|
 Slezkine in 2019. | |
| Born | February 7, 1956 Russia |
| Education | Moscow State University University of Texas, Austin |
| Occupation(s) | Historian, translator |
| Employer | University of California, Berkeley |
Yuri Lvovich Slezkine (Russian: Ю́рий Льво́вич Слёзкин Yúriy L'vóvich Slyózkin; born February 7, 1956) is a Russian-American historian, Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, Senior Research Fellow St Edmund Hall, Oxford, Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Biography
[edit]Slezkines’s father is a historian Lev Slezkine (Slezkin); his grandfather, novelist Yuri Lvovich Slezkin; his grandfather’s cousin, White Army officer and monarchist writer Yuri Alekseevich Slezkin, his grandfather’s paternal uncle was lieutenant general Aleksei Mikhailovich Slezkin, his maternal uncle, one of the founders of the White Volunteer Army, General Ivan Erdely. Yuri Slezkine’s great grandfather is Lieutenant general Lev Mikhailovich Slezkin.
[edit]His mother, Karma Moiseevna Goldstein; his maternal grandfather, an Argentine and Soviet Yiddish writer, Moisei (Mikhail) Khatskelevich Goldstein (killed in action in WW2).
[edit]Yuri Slezkine was born and raised in Moscow, graduated from Moscow State University in 1978 and worked as a Portuguese interpreter in Mozambique (1978-79) and English instructor in Portugal (1982) before moving to University of Texas at Austin (1983) to study Russian history.
[edit]Career
[edit]Yuri Slezkine received his PhD in History in 1989 and taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC before moving to Berkeley in 1992. He has been a fellow at the International Institute at the University of Michigan, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Le Centre National du livre and le Ministère de la Culture of France, the National Council for Soviet and East European Research, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hoover Institution, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin(Berlin Institute for Advanced Study), the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and the Institute of Modern History at New University in Lisbon. He has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Vassar College, Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham, and Visiting Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Sciences Po and École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, New College and St. Edmund Hall at Oxford, the University of Latvia, and European University Saint Petersburg. He has served as Director of the Berkeley Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, 2004-13, and Director of the Berkeley Program for Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, 2013-2019.
[edit]He has delivered talks, incl. named lectureships and keynote addresses, in the US, Canada, UK, Russia, China, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Israel, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. His popular writings have appeared in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Review of Books, and Granta.
[edit]His book, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca: Cornell U P, 1994), won the 1995 Book of the Year Award, Amer. Hist. Assoc, Pacific Coast Branch; his book, The Jewish Century (Princeton UP, 2004), received several awards and was translated into ten languages; his book, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution(Princeton UP, 2017), was named among the best books of 2017 by the New York Times, Spectator, Guardian, Economist, London Review of Books, the Australian, the Times Literary Supplement, and Le Monde, among others. It has appeared in English, Russian, French, Dutch, Italian, German, Spanish, and Polish. His most recent book, Ivar Smilga and the Russian Epilogue of the Latvian Revolution, has appeared in Latvian and Russian (Riga: Rigas Laiks, 2022)
[edit]Slezkine's theory of ethnic identity
[edit]Slezkine characterizes the Jews (alongside other groups such as the Armenians and Overseas Chinese) as a Mercurian people "specializ[ing] exclusively in providing services to the surrounding food-producing societies," which he characterizes as "Apollonians". This division is, according to him, recurring in pre-20th century societies. Some of these Mercurians have enjoyed great socioeconomic success relative to the average among their hosts, and have all, without exception, attracted hostility and resentment. A recurring pattern of the relationship between Apollonians and Mercurian people is that the social representation of each group by the other is symmetrical, for instance Mercurians see Apollonians as brutes while Apollonians see Mercurians as effeminate. Mercurians develop a culture of "purity" and "national myths" to cultivate their separation from the Apollonians, which allows them to provide international services (intermediaries, diplomacy) or services that are taboo for the local Apollonian culture (linked to death, magic, sexuality or banking). Slezkine develops this thesis by arguing that the Jews, the most successful of these Mercurian peoples, have increasingly influenced the course and nature of Western societies, and that modernity can be seen as a transformation of Apollonians into Mercurians.[1][2]
Views on the Russo-Ukrainian War and Western Civilization
[edit]According to Slezkine, Russia is divorcing itself from Western civilization, a process reinforced by the Russo-Ukrainian War. He further argues that the West's unwillingness to integrate Russia into a common European security infrastructure was a major factor in provoking the war.[3]
In October 2022, he argued that the West maintains unity in part by characterizing Russia as "evil," remarking "where would the West be without it?" He also argued that: "Ukrainian national ideology is in many ways the opposite of what we are taught in the United States or in Western Europe".[4]
More broadly, he believes that Western civilization is divided between Anglo-American/Western European cosmopolitanism and Eastern European/Israeli ethnonationalism. He has described the Baltic states as “ethnocracies” and Israel as “a racist state”, which, for just or unjust reasons, implemented an apartheid system with first-, second- and third-class citizens. Slezkine himself has many relatives in Israel; his aunt’s kibbutz was attacked on October 7 2023, but she survived. [5]
He argues that censorship in the West is very significant. It originates from private and professional organizations and creates a “society of conformists”. Among the West’s “sacred cows”, are issues related to family, sexuality and race. [6]
Works
[edit]- The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution, Princeton University Press, 2017
- The Jewish Century, Princeton University Press, 2004 (ISBN 0-691-11995-3)
- In the Shadow of the Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War, edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Yuri Slezkine, Princeton University Press, 2000
- Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Cornell University Press, 1994
- The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism, Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 1994), 414-452
- Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture, 1993
Awards
[edit]- 2002: National Jewish Book Award in the Eastern European Studies for The Jewish Century[7]
- 2020 Valdai Discussion Club Award, awarded in the presence of Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov.[8]
See also
[edit]- Amy Chua, American writer on Market-dominant minorities
- Model minority
References
[edit]- ^ Fitzpatrick, Sheila (2005-03-17). "I sailed away with a mighty push, never to return". London Review of Books. pp. 3–7. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 2018-06-04.
- ^ Lazare, Daniel (2005-11-30). "The Chosen People". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2018-06-04.
- ^ Юрий Слезкин։ Россия оторвалась от Европы всерьез и надолго, retrieved 2023-07-13
- ^ YURI SLEZKINE - The Overthrow of Literary Canons and the Decline of Western Civilization, retrieved 2023-08-19
- ^ url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axr14QMy9d4&t=8062s
- ^ url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axr14QMy9d4&t=8062s
- ^ "National Jewish Book Award | Book awards | LibraryThing". www.librarything.com. Retrieved 2020-01-20.
- ^ "Победителем Валдайской премии 2020 года стал Юрий Слёзкин, автор книги «Дом правительства»". Клуб «Валдай». Retrieved 2023-08-19.
External links
[edit]- Slezkine's website at Berkeley[dead link]
- The Jewish Century, Chapter One: MERCURY'S SANDALS: THE JEWS AND OTHER NOMADS
- An interview with Yuri Slezkine discussing the theses of his book The Jewish Century
- The Chosen People: The Nation's review of The Jewish Century by Daniel Lazare, November 30, 2005
- Yuri Slezkine: «I tend to do my own things and expect you to do yours» (an interview, April 4, 2013)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
- 1956 births
- 20th-century American historians
- 20th-century American translators
- 21st-century American Jews
- 21st-century American historians
- 21st-century American translators
- American male non-fiction writers
- American people of Russian-Jewish descent
- Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Historians from California
- Historians of Russia
- Jewish American historians
- Living people
- Moscow State University alumni
- Soviet emigrants to the United States
- Soviet Jews
- University of California, Berkeley faculty
- University of Texas at Austin alumni
- Writers about Russia