Abstract
The interview between Přemysl Houda and Alexei Yurchak mainly revolves around Yurchak's book Bylo to na věčné časy, dokud to neskončilo: Poslední sovětská generace [Everything was forever, until it was no more: The last Soviet generation], which was published in Czech in 2018 (the original US edition was published in 2006, the amended Russian edition in 2014) and proposed a new concept of the Soviet late socialism. The author explains the intentions he wrote the book with, explains his propositions, reacts to some critical comments, and argues with Václav Havel's (1936-2011) interpretations on "living in truth" and the nature of the society and political system in the period of late socialism, which Havel had formulated in his essay Moc bezmocných [Power of the powerless] in 1978.
Yurchak also speaks about the importance of language in the formation of social reality and on Putin's Russia today.