Alexei Vladimirovich Yurchak (; born 21 July 1960) is a Russian-born American anthropologist and professor of anthropology at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. His research concerns the

history of the Soviet Union The history of the Soviet Union (USSR) (1922–91) began with the ideals of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution and ended in dissolution amidst economic collapse and political disintegration. Established in 1922 following the Russian Civil War, ...

and post-Soviet transformations in Russia and the

post-Soviet states The post-Soviet states, also referred to as the former Soviet Union or the former Soviet republics, are the independent sovereign states that emerged/re-emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Prior to their independence, they ...

Early life and education

Yurchak was born and raised in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

(present-day Saint Petersburg),

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. He was trained as a physicist and managed a local musical group,

AVIA AVIA () is a Soviet/Russian experimental pop band formed in Leningrad in 1986. AVIA released four studio albums and led the first wave of the Soviet bands which made their breakthrough in the West in the late 1980s. Band history AVIA was formed ...

. He then moved to the United States, where he received his Ph.D. in

cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term ...

from

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

in 1997.

Hypernormalization

Science fiction authors and brothers

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky The brothers Arkady Strugatsky (28 August 1925 – 12 October 1991) and Boris Strugatsky (14 April 1933 – 19 November 2012) were Soviet and Russian science-fiction authors who collaborated through most of their careers. Their notable works in ...

described the reality Alexei Yurchak would later coin as hypernormalisation in their 1971 novel

Roadside Picnic ''Roadside Picnic'' (, ) is a philosophical science fiction novel by the Soviet authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky that was written in 1971 and published in 1972. It is their most popular and most widely translated novel outside the former Sovie ...

1979 movie "

Stalker Stalking is unwanted and/or repeated surveillance or contact by an individual or group toward another person. Stalking behaviors are interrelated to harassment and intimidation and may include following the victim in person or monitoring t ...

". 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 Stalinism (, ) is the Totalitarianism, totalitarian means of governing and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), 1927 to 1953 by dictator Jose ...

but before ''

perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

'', mid-1950s – mid-1980s) which led to the

dissolution of the Soviet Union The Soviet Union was formally dissolved as a sovereign state and subject of international law on 26 December 1991 by Declaration No. 142-N of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. Declaration No. 142-Н of ...

in 1991. In 2007, ''Everything Was Forever'' won the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize from the

Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal *Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry *Voluntary associatio ...

. 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. In 2016 British filmmaker

Adam Curtis Adam Curtis (born 26 May 1955) is an English documentary filmmaker. Curtis began his career as a conventional documentary producer for the BBC throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The release of '' Pandora's Box'' (1992) marked the in ...

released his documentary "HyperNormalisation" which re-popularised the term for modern audiences. It received further exposure (and greater resonance) on

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

in 2025 given the lingering effects of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, implacable

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

, and the systemic institutional destruction wrought by the

Second Trump administration Donald Trump's second and current tenure as the president of the United States began upon his inauguration as the 47th president on January 20, 2025. On his first day, Trump pardoned about 1,500 people convicted of offenses in the Janua ...

Books

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yurchak, Alexei Living people 1960 births 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