Everything was forever, until it was no more : the last Soviet generation / Alexei Yurchak.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yurchak, Alexei, 1960-

Series:

In-Formation

In-formation series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Socialism and culture--Soviet Union.

Socialism and culture.

Soviet Union--Civilization.

Soviet Union.

Soviet Union--Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (346 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Other Title:

Last Soviet generation

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Late Socialism: An Eternal State

Chapter 2. Hegemony of Form: Stalin's Uncanny Paradigm Shift

Chapter 3. Ideology Inside Out: Ethics and Poetics

Chapter 4. Living "Vnye": Deterritorialized Milieus

Chapter 5. Imaginary West: The Elsewhere of Late Socialism

Chapter 6. The True Colors of Communism: King Crimson, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd

Chapter 7. Dead Irony: Necroaesthetics, "Stiob," and the Anekdot

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Backmatter

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [299]-318) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780691121161

0691121168

9781400849109

1400849101

OCLC:

858762007