Юрчак, Алексей. Это было навсегда, пока не кончилось.Последнее советское поколение. Пер. с англ. Москва:Новое литературное обозрение, 2014. 664 с.; ил.

Анотація

The collapse of the Soviet Union was an unexpected phenomenon not only for the citizens of the USSR but also for politicians and international experts. The book of Alexei Yurchak “Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation” explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of “late socialism” (1960s–1980s). Through the eyes of the last Soviet generation: official documents, interviews, materials from personal archives, jokes, etc., the author is looking for reasons for the collapse of a strong system. Using anthropological, linguistic and historical methods of research, the author concludes that the main problem was lied in the ideology of the state. After Stalin death there was a mitigation of the ideological discourse of the party. Therefore, according to the scholar, the Soviet people participated in the “reproduction of ritual acts” (for example, they went to demonstrations or elections), but they could not or did not want to learn the ideas laid down in them (the constituent part of the discourse)”. As a result of the interaction of the subject with the system, which was built on the “principle of exclusion” and Gorbachev’s policy of reforming the ideology and other derivatives, the Soviet Union collapsed.