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.
eISBN: 978-1-4008-4910-9
Subjects: Anthropology, History
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