Getting away? How state-run media in late-socialist Czechoslovakia helped to subtly control potentially dangerous everyday practices among cottage owners
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Getting away? How state-run media in late-socialist Czechoslovakia helped to subtly control potentially dangerous everyday practices among cottage owners1 Kristina Alda2 This paper explores the interweaving of socialist ideology and the everyday in late socialist Czechoslovakia by analyzing the content of apopular hobby magazine and of atelevision series between 1968 and 1989. The magazine and the series relate to the phenomenon of weekend cottage ownership, which became especially popular among Czechs and Slovaks from the late 1960s to 80s. While not overtly oppositional to the socialist state, cottage ownership was perceived as potentially dangerous by state authorities because the values it promoted— self-reliance, acquisition of personal property, recreation for private pleasure— ran counter to the state ideology. Based on the analysis of the magazine and the series, this article argues that the subtle use of language in state-controlled media helped to subsume the practice of cottage ownership and to create adistinct public that was incorporated into socialist discourse, stripping the practice of undesirable connotations such as materialism and individualism. Keywords late socialism, Czechoslovakia, public, private, publics, popular media, everyday practices The phenomenon of weekend cottage ownership during late socialism in the Eastern Bloc has been commonly viewed as ameans of escape from state-dominated everyday life. Cottage ownership was often perceived as oppositional to the state because it espoused values that contradicted socialist ideology, namely, self-reliance, acquisition of personal property, and recreation for private pleasure. This paper explores the interweaving of socialist ideology and the everyday in late socialist Czechoslovakia by analyzing texts and images in apopular hobby magazine and atelevision series, both widely consumed by the general public. Iargue that the subtle use of language in state-controlled media helped to subsume the practices of cottage ownership and to create adistinct public that was incorporated into socialist discourse. In the process, those aspects of cottage ownership that were undesirable to the socialist state, namely, materialism and individualism, were stripped away. Magazine editorials, meanwhile, helped to reconceptualize the private pursuit of recreation as apublic activity. The state thus indirectly tried to domesticate some of the potentially dangerous 1 Tento text vznikl jako výstup projektu Kutilství ajeho význam pro českou národní akulturní identitu: současný stav, socio-kulturní ahistoricko-politické souvislosti, typologie avyužití potenciálu pro místní rozvoj (NAKI II DG18P02OVV022). 2 University of Toronto, Canada / Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences; contact: [email protected] OPEN ACCESS
22 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2020 ideas associated with cottage ownership. The hobby magazine and the television series helped to (re)define what it meant to be acottage owner and, by extension, agood socialist Czech. Following Jürgen Habermas (1989), Benedict Anderson (1991), Michael Warner (2002), and Michael Herzfeld (2005), Isuggest that the magazine and the series helped to create adistinct type of apublic, which helped to maintain the illusion that the sphere of cottage ownership was somehow existing apart from the state. This way, popular media were helping to produce and maintain socialist hegemony at atime when more direct propaganda was no longer taken seriously by the majority of the population. In the 30 years since the collapse of socialist systems in Europe, academic narratives of post-socialism have been about breaking down Cold War binaries— between East and West, socialism and capitalism, public and private— (see for example, BuckMorss, 2002; Verdery, 1996; Berdahl, 2000; Burawoy and Verdery, 1999; Gal and Kligman, 2000); about rupture and continuity (Fehérváry, 2013; Berdahl, 2000; Humphrey, 2002); about the plurality of socialist and post-socialist experiences (Berdahl, 2000; Burawoy and Verdery, 1999); about the failure of neoliberal regimes installed post-1989 (Ghodsee, 2011); and about using these failures as aplatform from which to critique neoliberal systems in the West (Verdery, 1996; Rogers, 2010). This vast body of work has allowed for are-evaluation of the different stages of socialism throughout the Soviet Bloc, amore nuanced understanding of socialist processes, as well as alook into the many contradictions inherent within late-socialist systems. Less work has been done, however— with the notable exception of Alexei Yurchak (2006) and Paulina Bren (2002; 2010)— on how certain forms of life and spaces of apparent autonomy resulted from efforts on the part of socialist regimes to contain or resolve contradictions, particularly those that could undermine the basis of their legitimacy and claims to authority. NORMALIZATION Following the Soviet invasion on August 21, 1968 that quashed Prague Spring and its efforts to transform the country’s socialist regime into amore humane one, Czechoslovakia was transformed into one of the most politically and culturally repressive regimes east of the Iron Curtain. The term “Normalization” first appeared in the Moscow Protocol, dating to August 28, 1968, as aprerequisite for the departure of the Soviet Army from Czech lands (Mechýř, 2003, p.93). In practice, this meant fulfilling five key conditions: the Communist Party was to expel those members deemed not loyal to Party ideology; the Party was to ensure that all media worked to “best serve socialism”; any anti-socialist activities and organizations were to be stopped immediately; the Party leaders would make personnel changes to centralize and consolidate power; and, finally, the Party was to work to promote friendship between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union“ (Mechýř, 2003, p.93–94). Spanning from 1969 to the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, the Normalization era was above all about “preserving the status quo” and keeping Czech society docile (Kohut, 1989, p.67). Installed by the Soviets and administered by Czech politicians who had promised loyOPEN ACCESS
KRISTINA ALDA 23 alty to the USSR, Normalization saw aresealing of the state borders, making emigration nearly impossible. The Party and all top administrative positions in the country were purged of any individuals that had been sympathetic to the Prague Spring project (Tůma, 2009, p.571). Anumber of historians argue, that during the late 1960s, leading up to the Prague Spring, attempts to reform Czech society were coming from two different poles: topdown from more progressive party leaders, such as then prime minister, Alexander Dubček, and bottom up from nascent civic initiatives, independent of the Communist Party (Prečan, 2003, p.157). Indeed, if we were to follow Habermas we could speak of an emerging public sphere that stood apart from public state authorities and could potentially serve as aregulating mechanism (Habermas, 1989, p.27). This public sphere quickly disintegrated with the rise of Normalization; Czech society entered what some historians characterize as a“static stage” (Rychlík, 2003, p.72), due to the lack of any significant changes to the social hierarchy installed after the Soviet invasion. Prague Spring showed just how opposed ordinary Czechs were to the socialist regime (Kryštůfek, 1981, p. vi). By the early 1970s, the Communist Party contained very few true idealists, party membership was regarded by most as little more than astrategic career move, and direct state propaganda was dismissed by the majority of the population (Tůma, 2009, p.571). THE RISE OF COTTAGE OWNERSHIP It was in this atmosphere of repression that cottage ownership soared and many aspects of cottage-owning culture became solidified. Although the popularity of weekend cottages predates socialism in Czechoslovakia, with its earliest roots in the late 19th century (Schindler-Wisten, 2010), during Normalization it became amass phenomenon that had wide-reaching cultural impact. Unlike in much of the East Bloc, the Czech economy did reasonably well throughout the 1970s and the standard of living continued to rise until the 1980s (Fawn, 2000, p.24). This meant that ordinary Czechs were able to afford achata (anewly-built cottage) or achalupa (an old farmhouse, converted into arecreational cottage), de facto asecond home, which was an unthinkable luxury, not just for much of East, but also the West (Schindler-Wisten, 2010, p.133). By the early 1980s, in Prague 31% of families owned cottages, 25% had access to the chatas of friends, and another 5–10% had chata access through their work (Bren, 2002, p.124). Scholars have argued that the late socialist regime tolerated the cottage ownership phenomenon and its apparent embracing of private ownership in an effort to keep the people content and docile in the wake of the failed Prague Spring. Indeed, Vilímek speaks about a“silent contract” between the regime and the people (2009, p.177), with relative material comfort exchanged for passive tolerance of the state’s policies. The relatively liberal period of the late 1960s, moreover, meant that more Czechs had been able to travel out and experience at least glimpses of ahigher standard of living in the West. State authorities were thus keen to keep the material needs of the Czech people satisfied (Vilímek, 2009, p.177), hence amore relaxed OPEN ACCESS
24 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2020 attitude toward the materialism that often accompanied the cottage ownership phenomenon. By the late 1960s old farmhouses became ahighly sought-after commodity, as Czechs— most often urban dwellers— bought up rural dwellings and converted them into weekend houses. Still others built their own small cottages in the countryside, creating cottage ownership communities around lakes, rivers or on the edges of forests. The regime did not discourage cottage ownership, seeing it as away of placating Czech society, at least in the material sense (Bren, 2002, p.125). Bren argues that chata culture became “ameans of escape into pastoral Bohemia and Moravia for those who sought solace from the trauma of ‘normalization’” (Bren, 2002, p.126). Ithink, however, it is important to stress that cottage ownership itself was not directly oppositional to the regime. Rather it stood in quiet contrast to socialist values and to the state-sanctioned rationalization of nature that sought to modernize the countryside. In paying homage to traditional rural life, chata owners were reviving aculture the socialist regime had sought to eradicate. They were, moreover, becoming property owners. Thus, although cottage ownership was not seen as directly threatening to the regime, those involved in this practice saw themselves as standing apart from the publicness of the state. As Bren argues, the practice of cottage ownership had the potential to be dangerous because it blurred some of the boundaries enforced by state discourse, threatening to reveal the inconsistencies in the ideology (Bren, 2002, p.124). Cottage ownership contradicted communism’s rejection of private property. It also encouraged materialism, with many Czechs pouring all of their savings into creating small pockets of luxury in their weekend houses. What is more, cottage activities, which effectively reduced the work week to just three full days, since many Czechs left for their cottages on early Friday afternoons and returned late Monday mornings (Bren, 2002, p.134), inevitably reduced the productivity of the country’s work force. The converted farmhouses, and to adegree even the newly built chatas, were decorated with astrong emphasis on the rural, and often the interiors of these dwellings came to resemble museums. Old farm tools, wagon wheels and even wooden crosses and religiously-themed paintings (once ubiquitous in the pre-communist Czech countryside) were dragged down from attics or bought from rural neighbors and mounted on walls and facades. And although urban dwellers using their cottages as weekend getaways could not hope to truly adopt atraditional way of rural life, for the weekend, at least, they could pretend. Chata owners took great pride in these dwellings and usually did all the reconstruction work and decorating themselves. The focus was on privacy, pohoda— aCzech word that denotes amixture of comfort and coziness— and astrong sense of nostalgia for the pre-communist past. The remote location of chatas aided in separating weekend cottage ownership activities from acity life that was associated with the politicized public sphere. THEORIZING LATE SOCIALISM While Western depictions of agrim socialist reality filled international media during the Cold War, most ordinary Czechs were living relatively comfortable lives, their OPEN ACCESS
KRISTINA ALDA 25 daily activities neither entirely supportive of, nor quite resistant to the socialist regime. Katherine Verdery’s work explores this contradiction and critiques the common understanding of socialist states as totalitarian by bringing to attention how weak many of the socialist states were, particularly in the late stages of socialism, with elements of capitalism seeping into what had been perceived as rigid, closed systems (1996, p.20). In What Was Socialism and What Comes Next (1996), Verdery rejects the notion of socialist states as monolithic and impenetrable, arguing that many capitalist elements were transplanted into the systems, particularly at the economic level. It was the “internal resistance and hidden forms of sabotage at all system levels” that eventually brought down the system, Verdery argues (1996, p.20). Daphne Berdahl (2000) and Michael Burawoy with Verdery (1999) engage in asimilar critique, calling for greater emphasis on micro-level processes of post-socialist transformation. This refocusing, they argue, reveals the coexistence of elements of rupture and continuity in the transition and challenges the linear narrative of progress from socialism to capitalism. More recently, Alexei Yurchak has focused on destabilizing some of the Cold War binary oppositions as away to explore new socialities that were created during late socialism, through practices that were neither simply opposed nor supportive of state ideology (2006, p.5). Yurchak suggests that under late Soviet socialism publics developed spontaneously, creatively, “through the performative shift of authoritative discourse” (2006, p.117). He compares the role of late Soviet urban café culture to Habermas’s concept of the public sphere, as it emerged in early capitalism, noting some of the parallels (the Soviet cafés became spaces of social interaction where public discourse was produced outside of state ideology). But Yurchak also points out the inherent binary categories in the concept of the public sphere— notions of protest and opposition to the state— which did not apply in the case of the Soviet cafés. The cafés created specific publics, but they were not part of any political opposition. In these publics, Yurchak argues, “Soviet reality was not resisted but deterritorialized” (2006, p.145), as in the case of youth clubs and various other state-sanctioned organizations. In thinking about the role of hobby magazines and television shows in late socialist Czechoslovakia, it is also helpful to draw on literature on publics, namely, the works of Warner (2002), Habermas (1989) and Anderson (1991). Habermas defines the modern public sphere as “the sphere of private people come together as apublic” (1989, p.27). Embedded in this concept is asort of regulating mechanism, central to modern democracy: the public sphere stands apart from state public authorities; it is critical and engages in debate with state authorities (1989, p.27), constituting public opinion. Benedict Anderson’s discussion of the rise of nation states and nationalism develops further some of the concepts discussed by Habermas. Anderson’s key argument is that the shift from Latin publishing to vernacular publishing played akey role in the emergence of nation states as anew type of imagined community (1991, p.39) and that this shift eventually led to the rise of print capitalism (which, of course, Habermas sees as akey moment in the formation of the modern public sphere). According to Anderson, the bourgeoisie was “the first class to achieve solidarities on an essentially imagined basis” (1991, p.77). This was largely done through print: by OPEN ACCESS
26 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2020 consuming common print, new publics were created. But what about publics created under asocialist regime? The readers consuming apopular hobby magazine and atelevision show about cottage owners would constitute “apublic” rather than “the public” if we follow Warner and his essay Publics and Counterpublics (2002). The key distinction, according to Warner, is that apublic is aspecific audience, being addressed by aspecific discourse, whereas the public is asort of undifferentiated totality, the people in general (2002, p.50) and its apparent unity is ideological (2002, p.84). Every discourse always has apublic, Warner argues— even state-controlled leisure magazines. Herzfeld’s concept of cultural intimacy (2005) is useful in trying to address some of the apparent contradictions within the pages of the cottage ownership magazine and in the TV series. Herzfeld argues that every nation has hidden, secret and sometimes embarrassing cultural practices and identities, which are often reactions against official, state-sanctioned culture. This intimate shared cultural identity is guarded from outsiders but is nevertheless asource of pride and common sociality. Self-stereotyping is one example of this. Herzfeld argues that such stereotypes help to maintain acommon ground among the members of anation. And such embarrassing shared cultural identity is co-constitutive of official state culture because it happens in relation to it; in other words, it accepts the official state-sanctioned culture and reaffirms it. This can happen through what Herzfeld calls “creative irreverence” (2005, p.2) that reinterprets or acts against state-sanctioned culture. But even creative dissent makes use of state-discourse and thus serves to validate this discourse. He notes that “even citizens who claim to oppose the state invoke it” (2005, p.2) simply by virtue of reifying the state. They may blame the state for their personal problems or for national-level problems, but this reification only serves to essentialize the state, to make it into aseemingly stable, entity that is always there. Yurchak and Dominic Boyer take this blurring of opposition and validation even further in their discussion of Soviet stiob, an ironic, absurdist form of popular aesthetic that effectively dissolved the distinction between parody of the Soviet system and its affirmation, due in large part, as Yurchak and Boyer argue, to the authors’ overidentification with the subject (2010). Stiob discourse remained well within the framework of socialist ideology. It made use of established Soviet symbols, but often decontextualized these symbols to the point that they were gutted of their original meaning. Stiob thus appeared to mock and support socialist values simultaneously. Like Herzfeld, then, Yurchak and Boyer, complicate the distinction between the state and the people. In speaking the language of socialist discourse— whether being irreverent or simply just living their everyday lives— ordinary people helped to prop up the creaky late-socialist state, whilst simultaneously hollowing it out from the inside by rendering many socialist symbols meaningless. As Iargue in the following pages, this process could also work in reverse, with the state making use of popular symbols and categories, such as ones associated with cottage ownership, to seemingly at once validate potentially oppositional practices and to change their meaning, in this case, through their recontextualization into socialist discourse. As in the case of stiob, the blurring between socialist validation and opposition could be so extreme that inherently paradoxical concepts started to seem normal. The once bourgeois OPEN ACCESS
KRISTINA ALDA 27 practice of owning aweekend house for recreational activities became atypically socialist practice, reframed— in magazine editorials and lifestyle columns, for instance— as something that benefits the whole society rather than just the individual. MEDIA CENSORSHIP Censorship, temporarily relaxed in the years leading up to 1968, was reinforced and became stricter than ever during Czechoslovak Normalization. This applied to many aspects of culture but above all to the country’s media. All major newspapers and magazines experienced extensive personnel changes, whereby top editorial positions were given to those affiliated with the communist party (Doskočil, 2003). Further, systematic pressure was exerted on journalists to “publicly present themselves as being responsible for the current political situation” (Doskočil, 2003, p.48). This meant taking the politically appropriate stance not only in editorials, but also in most news stories and, as examples form Chatař magazine will show, even in seemingly apolitical lifestyle columns and articles aimed at hobbyists. To officially cement the loyalty of journalists in top positions, the party published astatement called “Slovo do vlastních řad” (Aword within our own ranks), which was signed by 350 journalists, promising to promote the party’s ideology within the newsroom (Doskočil, 2003). In acollection of interviews conducted by the Czech Oral History Centre with former members of the socialist-era political elite, Jaroslav Čejka, who was the editor in chief for two prominent culture magazines (Kmen and Tvorba) and amember of the Communist Party Central Committee in the 1980s, recalls the ways in which magazine content was discussed and largely determined at cultural committee meetings of the Communist Party: Every Friday the Central Committee of the Communist Party would have ameeting. On Thursday, Ithink, was ameeting of the Party secretariat, followed by ameeting… for mid-level Party cadres— deputy editors and such… [The deputy editor of the general director of Czechoslovak television] raised his hand and said, “Comrade deputy, Imust raise acomplaint against Tvorba because Tvorba has accused us of not showing the films of certain directors… but all these directors have been banned” (Vaněk, Urbášek (eds.), 2005, p.35). Čejka’s recollection is just one example of the intertwined nature of media and politics in during Normalization; it also suggests, however, that the process of screening editorial content was not always centrally organized, nor were the rules always strictly enforced. In alater part of the interview Čejka notes that he, as Tvorba’s editor-in-chief, was not, in fact, reprimanded for printing articles that recommended the films of banned directors, such as Miloš Forman. The distinction between what was banned and what was allowed could be thus porous at times. Direct opposition to the regime existed as well, of course, with political dissidents using illegal samizdat publications as their platform and ultimately formalizing their demands for political change in Charta 77, adocument that brought no immediate OPEN ACCESS
28 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2020 change, save for the political persecution of many of its 1,883 signees. Most ordinary people, however, were only marginally aware of the dissidents. As historian Tomáš Vilímek writes, people were “so deeply embedded in the crushing machinery of everyday worries that they took no interest in the activities of those opposing the regime” (2009, p.177). And, indeed, oral history interviews conducted by the COH with ordinary people confirm this, with the vast majority of interlocutors perceiving dissidents as just another elite group, disconnected from the concerns of the majority of Czechoslovak citizens. METHODOLOGY For the purposes of this study, Ichose to analyze the style and content of the hobby magazine Chatař and the television series Chalupáři in order to examine some of the ways in which the socialist state approached potentially threatening cultural practices. Iselected Chatař because it was mainstream, easily accessible and with arelatively large circulation, which reached 90 000 by 1985 (Červená, 2016). It was launched in 1969, just as the period of Normalization began. Other similar hobby magazines that would have appealed to cottage owners existed, for instance Zahrádkář, aimed at hobby gardeners, but Chatař was during this time the only magazine devoted solely to cottage culture. Ilimited my analysis to issues published between 1969 and 1989, in order to span the period of Normalization although the magazine continued to be published for another four years after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The television series was produced and aired from 1974 to 1975, at the height of Normalization and could thus be considered representative of late socialist mainstream television. Cottage ownership propelled the plot and provided much of the comedy, rather than just being abackdrop. In analyzing the style and content of the magazine, Ifocused especially on editorials and lifestyle columns, where readers were often addressed directly by writers and editors who would have been vetted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. In addition to the content, Ipaid attention to tone and voice, and to any apparent contradictions among them. Ianalyzed the text in the broader context of the magazine layout, as here again it was possible to encounter contradictions or discrepancies when juxtaposing images or advertisements with the advice being presented to readers in lifestyle columns. Focusing on contradictions helped to provide some insight into how the regime tried to reconcile, often quite awkwardly, the many bourgeois elements of cottage culture with socialist ideology. In analyzing the television series Chalupáři, Ifocused primarily on the two main characters, who were essentially stock characters— the villager and the new cottage owner from the city— as it was through the treatment of these characters that the screenwriters were able to comment on cottage culture during this period. It became apparent that the relationship between state-controlled popular media and popular culture was complex and not merely unidirectional. As Iwill illustrate in the following sections, socialist media not only appropriated the language of cottage ownership culture, but also reconstituted it to make cottage culture fit within asocialist framework. OPEN ACCESS
KRISTINA ALDA 29 CHATAŘ MAGAZINE Even seemingly apolitical hobby or lifestyle magazines were censored and carefully edited to present content within asocialist framework; the cottage owner magazine Chatař (“Cottage Owner”) was no exception. The tone of the magazine was informal, with some, but not all articles, using the familiar second person singular “ty” instead of the formal second person singular “vy”, as would have been the standard in most magazines. It thus offered afriendly platform where the state (indirectly, through Party-affiliated editors) could communicate with the people in an informal way. The communication was not-entirely one-way: the magazine published letters from readers and also released annual surveys, asking readers to answer questions about their lives as cottage owners. Although, since editorial content was censored, one could also argue that the two-way communication channel was merely illusory. Much of the content of the magazine consisted of how-to articles, advising, for instance, on proper ways to build fireplaces, how to build foundations, the latest in chata or chalupa décor, gardening tips, and similar practical advice. Printed in black and white, the magazine also featured photographs of the exteriors and interiors of Czech cottages. Aregular feature that ran in the first half of the 1970s was amonthly visit to the cottage of afamous Czech, complete with pictures of his or her family'scottage and ashort interview about cottage life. Alongside the articles, the magazines contained advertisements for items such as furniture or even cottage assembly pieces (in some case made by foreign companies— usually Swiss or Austrian). Another regular feature was alegal advice column, responding to readers' requests for advice on how to navigate the bureaucracy of acquiring property in asocialist state. At least apage was usually devoted to readers offering to sell or buy different cottage ownership equipment, where readers could communicate with one another through the magazine. Following Anderson (1991), Iwould argue that this last item especially helped produce adistinct cottage ownership public. And following Warner, we can further understand this group as being "apublic" as opposed to "the public" (2002, p.50), that is aspecific rather than ageneral audience being addressed by aspecific, often ideological discourse. Nor was it only atop-down creation of publics, something that Herzfeld (2005) has criticized. The buy-sell page enabled lateral communication among the cottage owners themselves. Cottage owners would moreover often lend one another copies of the magazine and exchange cottage improvement tips, engaging in the sort of circulation that creates publics. In its focus on practical tips, even its inclusion of ads for items that cottage owners might covet, the magazine helped create the sense that those producing it— that is, the editorial staff, as well as the cultural committees of the Communist Party— were on the side of the cottage owners and understood their needs and desires. Further, it is helpful to recall that, according to Warner, participation alone creates apublic (2002, p.60). Simply by showing up at their cottage and engaging in the usual cottage ownership activities helped create the public of cottage owners. It was thus very much aself-organized public (2002, p.50). (The cottage ownership boom, after all, happened spontaneously, as an indirect reaction to the economic and political climate during the late socialist period.) OPEN ACCESS
36 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 1/2020 Descent into Collapse (1972–1989)”. Pp.569–588 in J. Pánek, O. Tůma (eds.). AHistory of the Czech Lands. Prague: Karolinum Press. Vaněk, M., P.Urbášek (eds.). 2005. Vítězové? Poražení? Životopisná interview. Prague: Prostor. Verdery, K. 1996. What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vilímek, T. 2009. “Kotázce vztahu avzájemné reflexi opozice aspolečnosti vČeskoslovensku po roce 1968”. Pp.176–220 in O.Tůma, T.Vilímek (eds.). Opozice aspolečnost po roce 1948. Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny. Warner, M. 2002. “Publics and Counterpublics”. Public Culture 14(1): 49–90. Yurchak, A. 2006. Everything was Forever Until it was No More. Princeton: Princeton University Press. OPEN ACCESS