Antropologicheskij forum, 2015, no. 26

A Review of ALEXEI YURCHAK, ETO BYLO NAVSEGDA, POKA NE KONCHILOS. POSLEDNEE SOVETSKOE POKOLENIE [EVERYTHING WAS FOREVER UNTIL IT WAS NO MORE: THE LAST SOVIET GENERATION]. Moscow: NLO, 2014, 664 pp.

Jeanne Kormina

National Research University Higher School of Economics
16 Soyuza pechatnikov Str., St Petersburg, Russia
kormina()eu.spb.ru

Abstract: This review considers the Russian translation of Alexei Yurchak’s monograph Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More (Moscow, 2014). The main idea of Yurchak’s research is to explain why Soviet civilization, which seemed so unshakable, fell apart so quickly. In his search, Yurchak turns to the realities of the late Soviet period. He frames his mission as the rehabilitation, or “rehumanization” of the Soviet person. He argues that during the period of late Socialism, the Soviet person was neither a wordless victim of the Soviet regime, nor a hypocrite. On the contrary, the Soviet system provided the Soviet person with opportunities to live a happy and meaningful life. Yurchak suggests the idea of performative shift, as a way to analyse late Soviet realities. He argues that while Soviet people participated in performances of ritualized actions and statements, they did not internlize the ideological messages embedded in these performances. As a result, new meanings and forms of being Soviet were born, which the state could not anticipate or fully understand. Yet, it seems that the peculiarities of how the Soviet symbolic system worked could be better explained in the framework of the arbitrariness of signs. According to this theory, the same signifier can receive new designatum or have multiple designata as a result of changing conventions concerning its interpretation. The group under investigation is one more specific feature of this anthropological volume. Although his work has been represented as a story of the last Soviet generation, Yurchak writes about a quite specific group of Soviet youth. The main protagonist of this work would be a person living in Leningrad with a higher education in engineering, who considers the Komsomol to be a vehicle for his social mobility. Although there are other voices represented in this work, this is the main character. Unfortunately, the Russian translation of the book, which was published in English almost ten years ago, does not include new research published on the topic. Yet the publication of this volume in Russian will provide it with a wider audience.

Keywords: Soviet society, fall of the Soviet system, speech act theory, performative shift.

To cite: Kormina J., 'A Review of Alexei Yurchak, Eto bylo navsegda, poka ne konchilos. Poslednee sovetskoe pokolenie [Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation]. Moscow: NLO, 2014, 664 pp.', Antropologicheskij forum, 2015, no. 26, pp. 209–221.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/026/kormina.pdf