What is this book? Not exactly a novel (well, sort of), not exactly non-fiction (well, sort of), a little bit hard sci fi (or is it?), a little bit social realism, a little bit fantastical. Usually amusing, sometimes grim, always fascinating. This is one of the most engrossing books I've read in years.Ultimately this is a collection of vignettes (interspersed with the author's own historical commentary) about a large cast of real and fictional characters either directly or tangentially related to the decades-long scientific, political and economic machinations of creating a more perfectly planned economy that can achieve a true post-scarcity techo-communism. There is a core group of central characters (mostly involved in computer science, thus the almost sci-fi element of some parts of the book), but new characters are added all the time, sometimes as one-offs, sometimes to appear in passing in someone else's story later on. Some of these tales could be brilliantly adapted to a comic-drama TV format (as gauche as this may sound) - particularly the episode where bumbling plant managers conspire to destroy one of their machines in an "accident" to explain a production shortfall, or the adjacent chapter about a Willy Loman-esque salesman hustling one client after another, getting shaken down and beaten up by police at lunchtime, staggering back to make a dinnertime meeting, and doing it all again the next day.There is no way that a book about this subject matter should work, but here we are. Part of this is because the author has a way of personifying vastly intricate systems. His descriptions of how a 60s era computer works or how a cancer cell is created are simply magisterial. In the same way, the otherwise distant concept of the national economy can be read as a living, breathing, human thing. It's instructive to the reader too.I think it certainly helps if the reader comes into the book already with some knowledge and interest in this area. (Would a die-hard anti-communist read this book in the first place though?)I started reading this book, not really knowing what to expect. it's basically fictionalized accounts / snapshots of different lives in the communist USSR, set typically around 1960s. the stories seem initially a bit disconnected. the writing and phrasing was very elegant so i kept going.Wow, as i got into it, the overall narrative blew my mind. The stories are actually connected in a powerful way. they take you from a grad student looking at a new life with a new wife, up to (middle of the book) riots caused by food prices and a subsequent massacre by the army. Each story involves a different person, but they reference either the job function described in previous stories, or the actual characters themselves.So, i'm half way through the book, and i realize that the overall narrative is one that examines how a planned economy approach of a communist country works, implicitly comparing and contrasting to a market approach. The logical thinking is impeccable - after the first few chapters I was thinking that a planned approach has to work by default, there are too many advantages related to system optimizations. Towards the middle, it's all falling apart and you realize that the micro optimizations and redundancy created by a market economy are major strengths that have to be handled with such an administrative overhead in a planned economy that it is ridiculous. It's a very powerful way to explain how the system worked, how the good intentions eventually filter down into some crazy actions, some bizarre checks and balances.Hats off to the author, the writing is superb. I have no idea if this is what the USSR was actually like, but this has given me much more of a human connection to the types of things i think people dealt with on a daily basis. I now intuitively "feel" the weight of the planned system, and have new respect for both the planned approach (good intentions, far too many limitations both human and academic) and the market approach (duplication, survival of the fittest). I'm currently working for one of the largest organizations in the world, and many of the details of the Gosplan planning process have analogs in my company.I'd rate this as one of the best books I have ever read. It has expanded my mind in many ways, and I find myself just zoning out thinking about the implications.Having first learned about the existence of this book through discussions between the sorts of people given to uttering fallacies like "True Communism has never been tried yet", I was expecting a work of science-fiction, one in which the incentives and innovation problems afflicting even market-socialism would simply be wished away through "better computers". Instead, what I found was something more akin to a cross between history, economics and sociology, a clear-eyed vivification of the aspirations of the Soviet leadership, how these were sold to the masses, how the reality increasingly fell short of these lofty goals, and how a few intellectuals thought they found a way to bring the dream back on track, before the personal incentives of party bosses and plant-managers laid waste to all the elegant mathematical dreams for surpassing the capitalists.Spufford, though "merely" a writer, truly gets why the Soviet system was doomed to fail in a manner that many supposed experts have long proven incapable of grasping: given the unwillingness of Stalin's successors to replace personal incentives with the Gulag and the NKVD operative's truncheon (or bullet) as motivation, it was inevitable that the Soviet system would gradually come to a crawl as citizens pretended to work at jobs where they were given wages they couldn't use to actually buy much of value.The arguments Spufford gives life to in this book are not new, and have been made over the decades by voices as varied as Ludwig von Mises and Joseph Stieglitz. What is genuinely innovative here is that said arguments aren't put across in the dry, technical language of economists addressing each other in peer-reviewed journals, nor even in the factual but jargon-free tone one might expect of an Economist survey article; instead Spufford uses the lives and frustrations of ordinary people to get the message across, showing how the perversities of the Soviet system manifested themselves in how one worked, how one interacted with colleagues, how one did business (or the Soviet Union's closest approximation to business) and how one dealt with officialdom, especially when what one might need to say was not what they wished to hear. The book succeeds in showing that the inhumanity and wastefulness of the Soviet economy wasn't some incidental aspect of the system but intrinsic to it, just as the perverse workarounds and sordid compromises it forced on the citizenry was an intrinsic flaw in the weave. Communism simply doesn't work on anything larger than the scale of a few hunter-gatherers, no matter the virtues of those who try to establish it as the basis of a state, or the amount of intellectual firepower they try to throw at it.I expected a very different kind of book.This one is a collection of fictional stories from late 50s / early 60s Soviet Union featuring Party members, economists and random folk picturing various aspects and problems of a planned economy. Now, the author definitely did a massive amount of reading on the topic, and it shows. The stories are nicely written indeed.The problem with this approach to non-fiction is that it's overly dumbed down. The are maybe 5-10 pages of facts there, the rest being just impressions and visions and opinions. I could have guess edfrom all the quotes praising storytelling and not the factual side of things...The idea was good- depict the economy of the Soviet era by using real and imagined contemporary accounts. In practice it was unreadable (by me). Boring, stilted and unnatural scenes in which the characters interact and display for us the failings of the Soviet system. The real Khrushchev and Brezhnev and pensioners and artists appear but the storyline is strained and uninteresting to read.A unique and intriguing book that conjures a new perspective on communist Russia from the second world War to the end of the Khrushchev era. It interweaves fictional characters' stories with an interpretation of Russia's history. The characters sometimes represent real people, occupying similar historical positions, playing similar professional roles and sharing life histories. But through their fictional role they express emotions and feelings and relationships which create an atmosphere of the times.Why Red Plenty? Because it describes an attempt to beat capitalism on its own terms and to make Soviet citizens the richest in the world. And for a time in the 1950's and early 60's it looked as though it was going to succeed. Certainly improvements in housing, nutrition, education and health surpassed any other country in the World at this time. Apparently the rise of Russia at this time was viewed like China's development is viewed today - with awe and trepidation.An original method of referencing not so much facts but feelings or attitudes or speeches or occasions to published books or periodicals at the end of each chapter underlines the authenticity of the attitudes being expressed. For example one reference was to a description "she had added a green leather belt bought at the flea market". The reference at the end of the chapter goes on to describe in great detail the legal car boot sales allowed so long as you had made the item and were not reselling . It lays out details of Article 154 of the Criminal Code dealing with the intricacies of the Soviet rules governing personal property. And there are copious such references at the end of each chapter which you do not have to read but add authority to the book.The depth into which a variety of subjects are investigated is impressive. For example how the economy was planned with a sophisticated discussion on linear programming and shadow pricing and the move from production targets to efficiency, or profit targets, in state manufacturing operations. Or how lung cancer develops at the cellular level and how the continuous exposure of the cells to chemicals leads to mutation and eventually the growth of tumours is described in fascinating detail.Whilst tackling the big issues in Russia at the time with seriousness, the way in which the story is told, and Francis Spufford calls it a fairy story, makes for an immensely readable book.Surprised by how much I loved this book - emphasis on my use of the word "book" rather than "novel" or "historical fiction". In 'Red Plenty', Spufford creates an eclectic mish mash of literary form which in turn provides the reader with a huge variety of emotional responses and information relating to the Khrushchev Soviet era.Spanning just over a decade of Soviet life jumping between characters and events, the book is intricately designed drip feeding the reader a wealth of USSR information (all of which is referenced in depth at the end of the book with superb extra reading lists). What I enjoyed the most about Red Plenty however wasn't its masterful use of form, thrilling prose or 'unputdownable nature', it was how effortlessly Spufford makes us experience a feel for the highs and lows of these characters, and for that matter the Soviet dream in general.