A society of the adjusted
The Brezhnev era and its significance today
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Adjustment and habit, fragmentation and levelling were features of everyday life during the later years of the Soviet Union. The Brezhnev era offered to the people more than the Soviet system ever could, above all, stability. The society paid for this with deformations: with double thinking, ambiguity and loss of trust, with a lack of differentiation and modernisation. The restoration under Putin follows on from the “golden age” of the Brezhnev era. Politics and culture make use of what is felt to be familiar to create a sense of “stability”, the keyword in today’s climate.
(Osteuropa 12/2007, pp. 65–78)