Alexei Yurchak


Alexei Yurchak is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Born and raised in Leningrad, the Soviet Union, his research concerns Soviet history and post-Soviet transformations in Russia and the former Soviet Union.

"Hypernormalization"

Yurchak coined the term "hypernormalization" in his 2005 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. The book focused on the political, social and cultural conditions during what he terms "late socialism" which lead to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet state in 1991. Yurchak argues that everyone knew the system was failing, but as no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, politicians and citizens were resigned to maintaining a pretence of a functioning society. Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the "fakeness" was accepted by everyone as real, an effect that Yurchak termed "hypernormalization".
In 2007 Everything was Forever won the Wayne Vucinic award from the American Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
Yurchak rewrote the book in Russian, expanding and revising it considerably. It was published in 2014 by NLO and in 2015 won the :ru:Просветитель |Prosvetitel Award for Russia's best non-fiction book of the year.

Books