Reviews

Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties' Soviet Dream by Francis Spufford

whatcarlaread's review against another edition

informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

jpowerj's review against another edition

4.0

Pretty interesting book, with lots of beautiful chapters, but has two issues which lead me to deduct a star: (1) uses hilariously big/obscure words that seem to serve no purpose whatsoever besides adding syllables/obscurity (2) lots of plot points seemed to sort of fizzle out, so that by the end of the book a bunch of characters/subplots I was interested in seeing developed never actually got developed. However, if you read it as a collection of vignettes that show peeks of Soviet life in the 50s, and you make sure to read the footnotes (the most interesting part of the book!), there's a ton of good stuff here! Definitely makes me want to read more about Soviet economic planning

luisvilla's review against another edition

5.0

This book is pretty unique, both in style and topic, and almost certainly not for everyone. But if you're in that weird niche of people seriously fascinated by the intersection of technology and high politics, it is a unique read you'll remember for a long time.

You can follow up afterwards by reading the Red Plenty Seminar from Crooked Timber, featuring the best serious analysis of "the optimization problem" that I've ever seen, as well as lots of other interesting material.

sophie_allan's review against another edition

4.0

Spufords book isn’t an ordinary retelling of history, rather it adopts fictional take to present the story of the Khrushchev era. It usually isn’t my go to as I prefer non fiction and straight telling of information, but this book really caught my interest. It allows the reader to understand what the Soviet Union was aside from the common knowledge. You can understand the state from civilians, workers, party members, government officials pov which I feel just adds to the historical interpretation of perhaps the defining nation of the 21st Century.

shortcited's review against another edition

dark emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

stormy_reading's review against another edition

funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

provaprova's review against another edition

4.0

Moved to gwern.net.

cdurbzz's review against another edition

4.0

pretty great, all things considered. on the whole, the brief dramatizations that constitute the book's "novelistic" elements were extremely effective, each one expounding upon internalized views of the soviet economic project (as opposed to exogenous, retroactive criticisms). what holds it back, as with any collection of thematically-adjacent vignettes, are the boring ones. standouts include the novocherkassk massacre, chekuskin the pusher, and zoya's expulsion from academgodorok, among others. well-researched and endlessly detailed; I learned a lot of little factoids about post-stalinist optimism and the kruschev thaw that I will forget in no less than one month. my fault, not the book's.

nick_latanick's review against another edition

3.0

I really wanted to like this book better, and I think I might after a second read. The story is constructed in a series of vignettes, spanning the social strata of the USSR, as well as decades. I had trouble following the characters as they reemerged in later chapters, always at first unsure if this is someone new, or if we had met them before. Some of the most interesting characters and plots are left behind unfinished -barely even started- as the narrative arc ploughs ever onward to the next year, and the next plan cycle. Perhaps the book's structure is itself a metaphor for the indifferent churn of a planned economy, but it didn't enhance my enjoyment of reading the book.

That said, the vignettes themselves are each engaging and well written on their own, and now knowing more about how the book is constructed, and what the relationships are between the vignettes, which plots are throughlines and which are deadends, I think a second reading would be less confusing and easier to enjoy.

zoodlemorph's review against another edition

emotional hopeful sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75