It was forever until it ended. The last Soviet generation

For Soviet people, the collapse of the socialist system was both an absolute surprise and something quite logical. This dramatic event revealed an unusual paradox: despite the fact that most people perceived the Soviet system as eternal and unchangeable, they... were fundamentally always ready for its collapse. In the book by Professor Alexei Yurchak of the University of California, Berkeley, the system of 'late socialism' (mid-1950s to mid-1980s) is analyzed in the perspective of this paradox. The image of late socialism that emerges in the book is fundamentally different from the usual stereotypes that reduce Soviet reality to descriptions based on simple oppositions: official / unofficial culture, totalitarian language / free language, political suppression / civil resistance, public deception / hidden truth.