Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation

By Alexei Yurchak

Book Overview

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.

Focusing on the major transformation of the 1950s at the level of discourse, ideology, language, and ritual, Alexei Yurchak traces the emergence of multiple unanticipated meanings, communities, relations, ideals, and pursuits that this transformation subsequently enabled. His historical, anthropological, and linguistic analysis draws on rich ethnographic material from Late Socialism and the post-Soviet period.

The model of Soviet socialism that emerges provides an alternative to binary accounts that describe that system as a dichotomy of official culture and unofficial culture, the state and the people, public self and private self, truth and lie--and ignore the crucial fact that, for many Soviet citizens, the fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialism were genuinely important, although they routinely transgressed and reinterpreted the norms and rules of the socialist state.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691121176
• ISBN13: 9780691121178
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More

This book was really eye opening. I did not know much about the Soviet generation or Soviet Union except for the little taught in high school, but this book showed me how these people lived and interacted in their daily life. It was really fascinating and just a great read. I definitely recommend this book.

A Brilliant Contribution

I must say that this is one of the most interesting books I've read so far concerning the experience of everyday (Soviet?) socialism. By reconsidering such an important subject through a solid (and novel) theoretical lens and providing high quality ethnographic data, Yurchak does what every good ethnographer should do: (laconically speaking) bring something new. This is a must-read for anyone who is interested in (post)socialism. Last but not least, it is very fun to read.

Performing admiration

The anthropological account of post-modern society offered in this book is certainly one of the best I encountered in recent years. By brilliantly and engagingly analyzing the late soviet society, the author provides us with original analytical insights into the peoples' relations with ideology, discourse and ritual. A perennial social laboratory for all kinds of cultural experiments, Russia in its soviet phase served A. Yurchak as an empirical field whereby to conceptualize the paradoxical, non-dichotomous and multi-layered post-modern social condition. Moreover, Yurchak joins the exclusive club of genial authors who succeeded in touching the intangible uniqueness of the "soviet experience" - i.e. everyday life, way of thinking, forms of language and power, performance of dream and fake. Thus, this reading is necessary for both the favorites of lively intellectual reading and for everyone who pretends to understand something about "Russians", even if they are already post-Soviet and therefore similar and close on the one hand, but different and inconceivable on the other. As anthropologist and Russian by origin, I try, in my everyday experience, to explain to my colleagues and friends the world I came from and to show how relevant this world is to any cultural and intellectual account of contemporary life. Yurchak's book is a great contribution to this challenge.

A remarkable book

This is a very good ethnographic account of some important aspects of everyday life in the later years of Soviet Union. It is interesting, well written, the quality of the research is high, and the account is truly enlightening. As a researcher actively interested in East European ethnography I woud very much like to recommend it to readers looking for interesting and non-banal accounts.