Red Plenty - BookWyrm

Paperback, 448 pages

English language

Published July 7, 2011 by Faber & Faber.

ISBN:: 978-0-571-22524-8

(1 review)

Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending.

Red Plenty is history, it's …

Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending.

Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

4 editions

Bithive reviewed Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

Red Plenty: The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dream in the Soviet Union

5 stars

Red Plenty delves deep into the ideals of the Soviet Union, specifically its vision of equitable wealth distribution. It reveals the tantalizingly close attainment of this dream, only to witness its tragic abandonment. Throughout the book, one cannot help but become sympathetic to this noble idea and comprehend the reasons behind its untimely collapse. The narrative sheds light on the intricate lives of individuals maneuvering within this system, brilliantly demonstrating how they adapted and organized themselves. The reader is left in awe of the compromises that were necessary for the system's initial survival, yet ultimately became its undoing. Inevitably, the once unshakable dream crumbled and disintegrated, leaving behind a profound sense of loss and failure.