Yuri Lvovich Slezkine (Russian: Ю́рий Льво́вич Слёзкин Yúriy L'vóvich Slyózkin; born February 7, 1956) is a Russian-born American historian and translator. He was a professor of Russian history, Sovietologist, and served as Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 2004-2013. He is best known as the author of the books The Jewish Century (2004) and The House of Government: A Saga of The Russian Revolution (2017).[1][2]
Yuri Slezkine
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Slezkine in 2019.
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| Born | February 7, 1956
Russia
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| Education | Moscow State University University of Texas, Austin |
| Occupation(s) | Historian, translator |
| Employer | University of California, Berkeley |
Slezkine originally trained as an interpreter in Moscow State University. His first trip outside the Soviet Union was in 1978-1979, when he worked as a translator in Mozambique.[3] He returned to Moscow to serve as a translator of Portuguese and moved to Lisbon in 1982 before entering graduate school in Austin, Texas, the following year. He earned a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin.[4]
Slezkine is a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and Jane K. Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2008).[5]
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. With the exception of the Romani, these "Mercurian peoples" have all 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, particularly during the early and middle periods of Soviet Communism, and that modernity can be seen as a transformation of Apollonians into Mercurians.[6][7]
According to Slezkine, Russia is divorcing itself from the rest of 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.[8]
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 alluded to the supposedly controversial ideas in Ukraine which do not sit well with the Western views: "Ukrainian national ideology is in many ways the opposite of what we are taught in the United States or in Western Europe".[9]
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. [10]
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. [11]
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