Yuri Slezkine

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Yuri Slezkine is a professor of Russian history at University of California, Berkeley, and author of the highly acclaimed The Jewish Century (2004). He holds a PhD from the University of Texas, Austin.

Originally trained as an interpreter in the Soviet Union, he worked in Mozambique before fleeing to the United States in 1982 where he eventually became an academic.

1 Works
2 Slezkine's theory of ethnic identity
3 External links
4 See also

[edit] Works

The Jewish Century, Princeton University Press, 2004 (ISBN 0691119953)
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

[edit] Slezkine's theory of ethnic identity

Slezkine characterizes the Jews (alongside such groups as the Armenians, overseas Chinese, and Gypsies) as a Mercurian people "specializ[ing] exclusively in providing services to the surrounding food-producing societies," which he characterizes as Apollonian. With the exception of the Gypsies, these "Mercurian peoples" have all enjoyed great economic success relative to the average among their hosts, and have all, without exception, attracted hostility and resentment. 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.