Alexei Yurchak
Alexei Yurchak | |
|---|---|
Алексей Владимирович Юрчак | |
| Born | Alexei Vladimirovich Yurchak 21 July 1960 |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Duke University |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Anthropologist |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Notable works | Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation |
Alexei Vladimirovich Yurchak (Russian: Алексей Владимирович Юрчак; born July 21, 1960) is a Russian-born American anthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.[1] His research concerns the history of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet transformations in Russia and the post-Soviet states.
Early life and education
[edit]Yurchak was born on 21 July 1960[2] and raised in Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg), Soviet Union.[1] He was trained as a physicist and managed a local musical group, AVIA.[3] He then moved to the United States, where he received his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Duke University in 1997.[4]
"Hypernormalization"
[edit]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" (the period after Stalinism but before perestroika, mid-1950s – mid-1980s) which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[5]
In 2007, Everything Was Forever won the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.[6]
Yurchak rewrote the book in Russian, expanding and revising it considerably. It was published in 2014 by Moscow's New Literary Observer and won the 2015 Enlightener Prize in the Humanities category.[7]
Books
[edit]- Это было навсегда, пока не кончилось. Последнее советское поколение (in Russian). Moscow: New Literary Observer. 2014. ISBN 978-5-4448-0361-5.
- Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-691-12117-8.
Popular Culture
[edit]Science fiction authors and brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky described the reality Alexei Yurchak would later coin as hypernormalisation in their 1971 novel Roadside Picnic. This book was the base for the Russian movie "Stalker (1979) ".
HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis that popularised the term hypernormalisation.
References
[edit]- ^ a b "Alexei Yurchak | Anthropology". anthropology.berkeley.edu. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
- ^ "Yurchak, Alexei, 1960-". Library of Congress Authorities. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
- ^ Как говорить об обвале СССР? Кирилл Кобрин, Ирина Прохорова, Алексей Юрчак (in Russian). Smena Center of Contemporary Culture. 30 June 2016. Event occurs at 4:17–4:41. Retrieved 9 July 2023 – via YouTube.
- ^ "Alexei Yurchak, Ph.D. 1997 | Cultural Anthropology". culturalanthropology.duke.edu. Duke University. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
- ^ Harris, Brandon (3 November 2016). "Adam Curtis's Essential Counterhistories". The New Yorker. Retrieved 3 November 2016.
- ^ "Past Winners of the ASEEES Vucinich Book Prize". aseees.org. Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
- ^ "Объявлены лауреаты премии "Просветитель"-2015. Дмитрий Зимин подтвердил проведение премии в 2016 году". premiaprosvetitel.ru (in Russian). 19 November 2015. Archived from the original on 4 January 2016. Retrieved 9 July 2023.
- 1960 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American anthropologists
- 21st-century American anthropologists
- Cultural anthropologists
- Duke University alumni
- Russian anthropologists
- Russian emigrants to the United States
- Russian studies scholars
- Scientists from Saint Petersburg
- University of California, Berkeley faculty