WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., April 21, 2009 -- Olga Shevchenko, assistant professor of sociology at Williams College, is the author of "Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow," published by the Indiana University Press.

Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews with Muscovites from various walks of life, Shevchenko's book explores how postsocialist Russians made sense of and responded to the acute uncertainties of everyday life.

These uncertainties were spurred by the rise of unemployment, currency devaluations, and political upheavals that plagued the nation in the 1990s. By the end of the decade, Shevchenko says, the ground rules of postsocialist life were shaped by this experience of "routinized crisis."

"I followed up on the themes that emerged in the course of my interviews, looking for tangible everyday forms in which social change could be observed, and exploring ways in which the experience of a societal crisis was embodied in a variety of diverse daily practices, from shopping for furniture and watching the news to seeking medical attention and solving crossword puzzles," she writes.

In the book, Shevchenko details her discovery of two interrelated trends emerging as central to achieving some measure of stability in Moscow.

First, domesticity and the household took on greater symbolic weight, while wider networks of belonging lost relevance. The family became both a political and symbolic refuge from the chaotic political and economic restructuring of the postsocialist decade, "the safety buffer absorbing the shocks and failures emanating from the outside world."

The second trend was the high premium on achieving and displaying autonomy. "In a sense, crisis turned into a symbolic resource," Shevchenko writes, "and grew to become the individuals' second nature, a source not only of daily aggravations, but, paradoxically, also of a sense of identity, dignity and status."

By the end of the first postsocialist decade, one "could most easily achieve trust through affirmation of universalized distrust, and the shortest path to building solidarity was an assertion that 'nowadays' solidarity was impossible."

By highlighting these aspects of the postsocialist crisis, Shevchenko's book draws attention to the consequences of prolonged social instability for people's basic notions of personhood, safety and practical competence.

At Williams, Shevchenko teaches Invitation to Sociology, Images and Society, Culture, Consumption and Modernity, Communism and Its Aftermath and Memory and Identity. Her new project looks at family photography and the generational memories of socialism in Russia.

She is the recipient of a number of awards, including an International Collaborative Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in 2006 and a Class of 1945 World Fellowship awarded by Williams College in 2005.

Shevchenko earned her B.A. from Moscow State University, her M.A. from Central European University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

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