Bylo to na věčné časy, dokud to neskončilo

The collapse of socialism was absolutely unexpected for the inhabitants of the Soviet Union, but at the same time, it was absolutely inevitable. Though the majority of people in later period of socialism perceived the Soviet system as eternal and unchangeable, they were at the same time ready for its fall. This paradox has become the basis of this book on the last Soviet generation, written by a member of this generation, Alexei Yurchak, who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Yurchak's model of Soviet socialism offers an alternative to the traditional binary model, an analysis of socialism based on dichotomies such as life in truth versus life in lies, power versus ordinary people, or official culture versus unofficial culture. Yurchak points out that such an approach omits one important fact: for many Soviet citizens the values of socialism were near and somehow important, and this despite the fact that in everyday life they often reinterpreted and went beyond the rules of the state, which shielded them.