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 is a professor of Russian history, Sovietologist, and Director of the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known as the author of the book "The Jewish Century" (2004) and "The House of Government: A Saga of The Russian Revolution" (2017). Career. Slezkine originally trained as an interpreter in Moscow State University. His first trip outside the Soviet Union was in the late 1970s, when  he worked as a translator in Mozambique. He returned to Moscow to serve as a translator of Portuguese, and spent 1982 in Lisbon before emigrating to Austin, Texas, the next year. He earned a PhD from the University of Texas, 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. 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.