Book squee: "Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More"

[sabotabby]

I just finished Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, which, as several have pointed out, is kind of the best title ever. It's about the ordinary lives of young people in the Soviet Union from the 50s to the 80s.

The prevailing images of Soviet life in the West—at least when I was growing up—were of disaffected youth who wanted nothing more than Levi jeans and Coca-Cola, quietly mouthing the hackneyed slogans forced on them by the government while privately listening to censored rock music and plotting the downfall of socialism.

And who could blame them?


Salad with mayonnaise. Check out English Russia's World of Soviet Groceries post.

Yurchak, having actually experienced the system firsthand, takes a more nuanced view, rejecting binaries (surprise! He is a post-modernist) and exploring instead the basic contradictions experienced by Soviet citizens, leading to the USSR's collapse. He begins from Claude Lefort's paradox of modernist ideology:

[T]he split between ideological enunciation (which reflects the theoretical ideals of the Enlightenment) and ideological rule (manifest in the practical concerns of he modern state's political authority) [...] In the society built on communist ideals, this paradox appeared through the announced objective of achieving the full liberation of the society and the individual (building of communism, creation of the New Man) by means of subsuming that society and individual under full party control. The Soviet citizen was called upon to submit completely to party leadership, to cultivate a collectivist ethic, and to repress individualism, while at the same time becoming an enlightened and independent-minded individual who pursues knowledge and is inquisitive and creative.

The result is an analysis that actually allows Soviet citizens some agency, particularly in Yurchak's descriptions of the Komsomol (Communist Union of Youth), to which most people in the USSR belonged. Loyal Komsomol party secretaries had no problem espousing a critical but supportive view of socialism, while seeing no inherent contradiction with an appreciation of what Yurchak calls the "Imaginary West" as constructed through music, shortwave radio, and subculture. In fact, it was the ideology of their institutions, which in theory promoted inquisitiveness, that led them to pursue these interests.

The first two chapters are a slog through an analysis of authoritative discourse—the "everything was forever" referenced in the title, where content became subservient to the creation of language that removed the author and gave a sense that there was a universal, static truth that everyone new. (The result of this discourse being hilarious copypasta speeches and banners where local Komsomol members would notice grammatical errors but be forbidden by higher-ups to correct them, since the mistake was in the original.) It's dense stuff, mainly dealing with the relationship between the constative dimension of discourse—which can be true or untrue—and the performative dimension—which can only be effective or ineffective. (Thankfully, we get examples. A constative statement is "I am cold"—a description of reality; a performative statement is "I vote for this resolution," which affects the nature of social reality.) At times, I felt I lacked the requisite background in linguistics and po-mo to understand what the author is on about, but he quotes Laibach along with Derrida, so I got through it.

The rest, which focuses on institutions and subcultures, was a much faster, more engaging read. He looks at concepts of svoi ("us," as in "us/them," distinguishing "normal people" and complicated social networks from activists—in this context, unquestioning pro-Soviet ideologues, and dissidents), vnye (occupying a position simultaneously inside and outside the system, but finding the official discourse "uninteresting"), and some very strange performance art. There's some really good primary source research that's just completely engrossing, breaking up the theory with letters, jokes, and strange collections of anecdotes.

Anyway, totally worth a read. If you got through the above blather, you can have a picture of a bootleg record made on an X-Ray:

Comments

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the full post yet, but just wanted to say:

Who


Could


Blame


Them


Indeed!

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I had to tumblr that xray record, and I learned they have the awesome name of Roentgenizdat.

performative/constative an't too pomo - more Austin and the ordinary language folks. Impeccable pedigree

[gethenian.livejournal.com]

THIS IS INCREDIBLY RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.

To Amazon!

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

I just finished Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, which, as several have pointed out, is kind of the best title ever.

A similarly awesome title is Let's Put the Future Behind Us. I cannot vouch for the book since I have never read it, but the title and cover are awesome.

[queerasmoi.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of something my friend Richard recently posted on Facebook:

"[Richard] would like to point out how the anticommie nay-sayers are wrong. The communist governments of Yesteryear had people living in shoebox sized apartments only 10-40 years after their regimes formed. It took capitalist societies nearly 100 to accomplish the same thing! Clearly, communism is more efficient."

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

That looks fascinating and I want to read it. Thanks for writing it up!

Oh, now I can talk about myself

[shelestel.livejournal.com]

The Soviet citizen was called upon to submit completely to party leadership, to cultivate a collectivist ethic, and to repress individualism, while at the same time becoming an enlightened and independent-minded individual who pursues knowledge and is inquisitive and creative.

Did he hypothesize that the active (official encouragement of) interest in science and technology, as well as in outdoor time-spending, can be seen in such light?

My parents (all 3 of them) are graduates of the so-called "math schools" which gathered (mathematically, but talents often correlate) gifted kids and provided them with a rather countercultural climate and education. Not so much underground rock kind of counterculture, which was a relatively late development, but a two week class canoe trips and math contests kind of culture. The party line was seen with pervasive irony, though there were those (primarily, Jews) who confronted it directly, such as my stepfather when his father was in jail. My mom says she never paid any attention to official discourse (being mildly autistic probably helped :) ). She did burn her komsomol ID at some point, though, and appropriately hid underground lit under the floor tiles.

Regarding "occupying a position simultaneously inside and outside the system, but finding the official discourse "uninteresting"" - I think the post ottepel' generation was generally like that. Before that - say my grandmother - irony towards party slogans was more rare.

Anyway.

Ejaculation salad is very funny, I'm stealing.

Crap, I should do work.