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A review by margaret21
Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties' Soviet Dream by Francis Spufford
5.0
Is this a novel? I've never read a novel though with 60 pages of footnotes. Is this a history book? History books don't usually mix a cast of entirely fictional characters with known figures from history. Spufford himself describes it as a 'half-way house on the borders of fiction'.
It's clever. Each section of the book is prefaced by the relevant section of mid-20th century Russian economic and political history. Each is then succeeeded by a few chapters of, well, vignettes really, in which we meet factory workers, lovers, members of the scientific elite, managers.... With one exception, we never revisit these characters, nor are their stories complete tales. What we are given is a slice from their lives, one which, when read with the others, and with the accompanying history provides a rich and illuminating picture of Russia's planned economy and its effect on day-to-day life.
You'll learn about economics, and politics, but most of all, you'll learn about people, and how by being unpredictable, tired and human they, together with ideologies that were sometimes shortsighted or perverse prevented the realisation of the Great Soviet Dream.
It's clever. Each section of the book is prefaced by the relevant section of mid-20th century Russian economic and political history. Each is then succeeeded by a few chapters of, well, vignettes really, in which we meet factory workers, lovers, members of the scientific elite, managers.... With one exception, we never revisit these characters, nor are their stories complete tales. What we are given is a slice from their lives, one which, when read with the others, and with the accompanying history provides a rich and illuminating picture of Russia's planned economy and its effect on day-to-day life.
You'll learn about economics, and politics, but most of all, you'll learn about people, and how by being unpredictable, tired and human they, together with ideologies that were sometimes shortsighted or perverse prevented the realisation of the Great Soviet Dream.