“[An] extraordinary book.”—Brian Eno • “One of the best books about the U.S.S.R. in its late stage.”—Alexei Navalny, from Patriot: A Memoir • “Not just history, but a pleasure to read, a true work of art.”—Slavoj Žižek • “Extraordinary and brilliant.”—Adam Curtis, director of HyperNormalisation A fascinating exploration of “hypernormalization” in a political system that seemed powerful and eternal—even when it was on the verge of collapse 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. "A brilliant anthropological reconstruction of the mental and cultural furniture of late Communism." ---Robert Grogin, Historian "If there is a prize for best title of the year, this book surely deserves it. Alexei Yurchak . . . has written an interesting and provocative book about the way young Soviet Russians talked in the Brezhnev period and what they meant by what they said." ---Sheila Fitzpatrick, London Review of Books " Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More is an important book. . . . [It] provides fresh paradigms that pack a hefty explanatory punch both with regard to its immediate subject matter and beyond. Its publication means that discussions of Soviet life, culture, and literature that rely on the old, rigid binarisms are going to seem instantly dated. . . . This study is a must-read." ---Harriet Murav, Current Anthropology "Amidst these prolix transformations in Russian language and civilization, Yurchak's contribution has come in the form of a deep listening." ---Bruce Grant, Slavic Review "The strength of Yurchak's study is in its methodological-analytical grasp of the seemingly contradictory nature of everyday existence. . . . Yurchak provides an elegant methodological tool to explore the complex, intersecting and often paradoxical nature of social change." ---Luahona Ganguly, International Journal of Communication “Yurchak’s incredibly imaginative book takes readers into the heart of what it was like to live through the final decades of the Soviet Union. Millions of Soviets couldn’t conceive that the USSR would ever collapse, and yet, when it did, it seemed almost unsurprising to them. Yurchak devised the rich concept of ‘hypernormalisation’ to explain this paradoxical experience. His extraordinary and brilliant book raises a powerfully unsettling question that reaches far beyond the Soviet context: Are we in the West today living in our own hypernormal world without realizing it?” —Adam Curtis, director of HyperNormalisation “I’ve recommended this extraordinary book to so many people. It’s a deep chronicle of a society undergoing fundamental change, and the bizarre contortions of popular culture that follow in its wake. As our own societies morph, erode, and fall apart, this book is a valuable guide to where we are now.” —Brian Eno “One of the best books about the U.S.S.R. in its late stage.” —Alexei Navalny, from Patriot: A Memoir "Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More immediately seduced me by its very title with a profound philosophical implication that eternity is a historical category—things can be eternal for some time . The same spirit of paradox runs through the entire book—it renders in wonderful details the gradual disintegration of the Soviet system from within its ideological and cultural space, making visible all the hypocrisy and misery of this process. I consider Yurchak's book by far the best work about the late epoch of the Soviet Union—it is not just histor