Introduction
It now became a commonplace practice among political scientists to refer to seventy years of Soviet Union’s geopolitical existence within methodological framework ‘totalitarianism vs. democracy’. Nevertheless, people who were born and raised in USSR (especially the representatives of Soviet last generation) would strongly disagree with suggestions that, while living in Soviet Union, they never ceased being subjected to ideologically repressive tyranny – whatever the illogical it might sound. This partially explains the fact that, despite what it is now being commonly assumed, the representatives of last Soviet generation could be described as anything but ideologically brainwashed. The validity of this statement becomes self-evident, when the behavior of former Soviet subjects is being compared to the behavior of native-born Westerners, who genuinely believe in the dogmas of political correctness. Alexei Yurchak’s book Everything Was Forever until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, represents one of the most comprehensive academic attempt (up to this date) to reveal the actual essence of earlier mentioned phenomena.
Main text
In it, author had gone a great length while researching the workings of what he refers to as ‘dual consciousnesses’, on the part of Soviet citizens. According to Yurchak, there is a certain paradox in the fact that, even though these people never ever considered a possibility for the collapse of USSR in any near future, after this collapse had occurred in 1991, it did not come to Soviets as a particular surprise, whatsoever: “Although the system’s collapse had been unimaginable before it began, it appeared unsurprising when it happened” (2006, p. 1). In order to address this paradox, Yurchak mainly relied on Foucault’s theory of ‘authoritative discourse’, which explains the mechanics of how semantic meaning of politically or legally related terminology is being gradually replaced with a constitutive one. Given that fact that in seventies and eighties, the Communist discourse had been largely deprived of its ‘ideal’ subtleties, and because there were no alternatives discourses in Soviet society at the time, citizens did not have any other option but to endow Communist terminology with subtle semiotics, which were completely unrelated to the political concepts, for which this terminology stood.
According to the author, during the time of ‘zastoi’ (stagnation), Soviet society was turned into nothing short of Alice’s wonderland, where the rules of discursive logic simply did not apply: “The late Soviet world became a kind of ‘postmodern’ universe where grounding in the real world was no longer possible, and where reality became reduced to discursive simulacra” (2006, p. 76). During the late Soviet era, Russian intellectuals were trying to disassociate themselves from ‘authoritative discourse’ – however, it would never even occur to them to confront this discourse actively, simply there was no actual content in it. As it appears from Yurchak’s book, the same could be said even about top-ranking Communist functionaries – these people’s formal affiliation with a Communist doctrine and their genuine belief in beneficial essence of Communist ideas did not prevent them from actively undermining the integrity of Soviet system from within. For example, the fulfilling of ‘pyatiletka’ (5-year economic plan) had always been Soviet officials’ top priority. However, they were only concerned about fulfilling this plan on paper (statistics), rather than fulfilling it literally.
In its turn, this had led Yurchak to conclude that the quick and painless dismantling of USSR was predetermined by what he refers to as ‘heteronymous shift’, which had taken place within Soviet society in seventies and eighties. Author defines ‘heteronymous shift’ as the process of continuously replicated authoritative linguistic forms being instilled with an unrelated semantic meaning: “The term heteronymous shift emphasized that the meaning for which reproduced forms of authoritative discourse stood could slide in unpredictable directions” (2006, p. 26). When this shift occurs within ideologically oppressed society, the whole system of existential values, signified by authoritative linguistic forms, transforms its very essence. In its turn, this ensures such system’s continuous longetivity – this is exactly the reason why the majority of Soviet citizens really did believe that USSR would exist into posterity.
However, it is not only that the system of ideological oppression, affected by ‘heteronymous shift’, goes about maintaining its vitality by allowing citizens to freely interpret its dogmas – it also does it by the mean of establishing preconditions for alternative discourses to originate within the framework of an authoritative one. This explains the paradox of why Soviet people were instinctively ready for drastic socio-political changes, on one hand, while remaining intellectually inflexible, on another.
Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that Everything Was Forever until It Was No More provides readers with entirely new outlook on the very nature of totalitarianism, which cannot be conceptualized within dychotomic boundaries of Western traditional discourse, in regards to the subject matter. As Yurchak was able to prove in his book, it is utterly simplistic to suggest that, throughout the course of USSR’s existence as geopolitical entity in the time of ‘zastoi’, its citizens could have been categorized as ‘oppressors’, on one hand, and the ‘oppressed’, on another. According to author, during the time of Soviet Union’s decline, the very notions of ‘oppression’ and ‘liberation’ (as perceived by Soviet citizens) became essentially ambivalent.
In order to support the validity of such his idea, Yurchak draws a number of historical parallels between socio-cultural and ideological dynamics in ‘late’ USSR, which had let to this country’s eventual collapse and socio-political circumstances, which had led to the collapse of European colonialism in the Third World. For example, as it appears from Yurchak’s book, the reason why South American natives and mestizos were able to contribute rather substantially to the process of South American countries attaining independence, is because – without rejecting the system of Spanish cultural and religious values in its entirety, they have utilized these values in utterly unnatural manner.
What it means is that, due to apparent universality of author’s suggestions, they cannot be thought of as having strictly academic, but also practical significance. It is not only that Yurchak’s book provides readers with an insight onto how the quick self-destruction of ‘evil empire’ correlated with the fact that nobody really expected it to happen, but also offers researchers a methodological tool of addressing the issue of how people’s endowment with ‘double consciousness’ results in bringing about rather drastic geopolitical consequences. Nowadays, when the ‘celebration of diversity’ concept had attained the status of only appropriate official doctrine in Western countries, the reading of Everything Was Forever until It Was No More will come particularly handy to those who want to get a better understanding of what represents the metaphysical essence of socio-political realities in today’s West. Just as it was the case in ‘late’ Soviet Union, the increasing number of Westerners grows to refer to the notions they have been indoctrinated upon in schools/universities (multiculturalism, tolerance, racial equality, etc.) as essentially meaningless, but necessary to memorize, in order to be able to advance in life.
Before we conclude this review, let us summarize Yurchak’s book most distinctive characteristics:
- Everything Was Forever until It Was No More contains a substantial amount of ethnographic, biographic, historical and political data that fully substantiates the validity of author’s conclusions.
- Yurchak’s book dispels the soundness of now popular idea that linguistic forms do define the content of a particular socio-political discourse. As author had shown – once these forms become ideologically ‘petrified’, and once there is no way to dispose of them altogether, they simply get to be filled with a new meaning. Yet, the ‘meaning’ originates in one’s mind and not in the language, as ‘thing in itself’.
- In his book, Yurchak denies validity to suggestions that the people’s ideological oppression can only take place within formally totalitarian states. Apparently, there can be no qualitative difference between ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘democracy’, for as long as both systems require its subjects to utilize authoritatively formulated but constitutively understood ‘newspeak’.
Conclusion
Thus, it would not be much of an exaggeration to suggest that Everything Was Forever until It Was No More represents a revolutionary breakthrough in the fields of ethnography, political science and linguistics. Given the fact that Yurchak is a well-established American academician, he never needed to fill his book with politically correct gibberish, as the ultimate mean of increasing book’s volume and gaining additional academic credits. In its turn, this explains book’s another outstanding feature – an amazing clarity, with which author was able to express his thoughts on the subject matter. Therefore, it is not only that the reading of Yurchak’s book would allow people to experience the state of intellectual, but also aesthetic exaltation.
References
Yurchak, A. 2006. Everything Was Forever, Until it Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.