Yuri Slezkine

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).

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

Career

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. 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.

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).

Slezkine's theory of ethnic identity

Main article: Middleman minority

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.

Views on the Russo-Ukrainian War and Western Civilization

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.

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".

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.

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.

Works

• 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

• 2002: National Jewish Book Award in the Eastern European Studies for The Jewish Century
• 2020 Valdai Discussion Club Award, awarded in the presence of Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov.

See also

• Amy Chua, American writer on Market-dominant minorities
• Model minority

External links

• Slezkine's website at Berkeley
• 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)