ran on Crooked Timber

1 IiiThe Red plenty Book Event a round-table discussion of Francis Spufford s novel, Red plenty ran on Crooked Timber from May 29 to June 14, permalink: Book Event was organized by Henry book was edited by Henry Farrell and John Holbo, and designed by John Red plenty Book Event is CC licensed: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Unported plenty is a NovelKim Stanley Robinson 1 Red plenty or Red Poverty? Reality versus Psychoprophyilaxis : Reflections on Spufford s Vision of The Rise And The Decline of The Communist SystemAntoaneta Dimitrova 3To market, to market .. or not?George Scialabba 11In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves Yo uCosma Shalizi 21On Narrating a SystemCarl Caldwell 47 Red plenty My Brush With BrezhnevismJohn Holbo 53 You Are Alone, In A Dark Wood.

2 Now Farrell 57 New Ideas From Dead Political SystemsDaniel Davies 67 Worlds of YesterdayFelix Gilman 73 Good and PlentyRich Yeselson 79 Will we ever know what otherwise is? Did we ever?Life, Fate and IronyNiamh Hardiman 85 Red plenty :What WereThey Thinking?Maria Farrell 91 Red plenty - or - Socialism Without DoctrinesJohn Quiggin 97 ResponseFrancis Spufford 101 Contributors 1271 Red plenty is a NovelKim Stanley RobinsonI loved Francis Spufford s Red plenty , which is a very beau-tiful seems to be some unnecessary confusion as to its form or genre. You can see that in the front matter of the American edition, in which it is described as like no other history book, a collection of stories, faction, part detective story, a set of artfully interwoven genres, the least promis-ing fictional material of all time, reverse magical realism, and half novel/half history.

3 Of course it does not help that the first words of the novel are This is not a novel. There is too much to All wrong. There is always too much to explain, and yet novels are still novels. They have an immense capacity to in-clude and shape all aspects of the real. Red plenty is not even a particularly unusual novel, in terms of length, complexity, self-awareness, historical inclusions, bricolage technique, or any other matters of style or content. Shall we say Moby Dick is not a novel, or War and Peace? No we shall not. Red plenty is a novel like they are, and should be discussed as right. Getting past the first sentence: what I particularly liked in Red plenty is the way it humanizes a mysterious and convulsive mass of recent history.

4 It s a tremendous demonstra-tion of what a great diagnostic power the novel can wield in the hands of a strong novelist. You could call it an outstanding example of socialist realism, in that its critique of the Soviet experiment also contains a deep sympathy for the experiment s goals, and for the many people who continued to struggle for those goals to the end, despite the worsening circumstances. 2It should be read together with Gladkov s Cement to make that point clear. It should also be read in the context of science fiction, historical fiction, alternative history, Soviet modern-isms, and steampunk. This would be to put it in the context of other similar works, where it will always shine and it is so full of characters I cared about, described in a precise emotional language.

5 A moment came for me, in the chapter called Midsummer Night, 1962, when the book took flight and soared into that space where we live other lives and hear other people s thoughts, and feel their feelings. Now I too have been there! This is what novels do, and I insist Red plenty is a novel because it strengthens our sense of the form to have this book included in plenty or Red Poverty? Reality versus Psychoprophyilaxis : Reflections on Spufford s Vision of The Rise And The Decline of The Communist SystemAntoaneta DimitrovaDespite being modestly defined as a Russian fairytale by its author, Francis Spufford s Red plenty combines, in an original way, Russian style fiction and social science.

6 Its originality lies in making the history of an idea into fiction and doing it in such a way that the combination of documentary and fiction does not come across as false history or as historical literature, but as a complex, engaging, exciting epic illuminating ques-tions of economics and politics that are normally too dry for art. By interweaving the stories of numerous characters with historical events and a grand narrative describing economic and social processes of several decades, Spufford fits into the best traditions of Russian fiction, but his focus on ideas rather than emotions makes his approach profoundly un-Russian. This is, to my mind, rather a plus than a weakness of the book, since the great Russian writers of the 19th and 20th century are unrivalled in portraying the great mysteries of the human soul in turbulent times.

7 What they have not done, what hardly anyone has done, is to make a calm, objective, almost scien-4tific investigation of the ideas and relationships that made the success of the Soviet regime possible in the 1950s and 1960s, at the genuine and idealistic belief of citizens and elites at the time that, as Spufford s Kantorovich character reasons, if he could solve the problems people brought to the institute, it made the world a fraction better (11).Thus Red plenty is a book for social scientists in more ways than one. First because it draws on history and uses a great amount of documentary material, economic and social history of the Soviet Union to tell the story of the communist dream of abundance for all.

8 And second, and perhaps more impor-tant, because its evidence driven narrative aims to answer several typical social science questions, especially for a social scientists interested in communism s rise and fall. How could the Soviet planning economy be so successful in producing serious economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, how could the Soviet system produce the science and innovation that led to space exploration and many other scientific achievements? And why did it then fail to continue doing so, to keep the pace of economic growth and scientific discovery?Among Spufford s many achievements in this book is that he provides some direct and some indirect answers to these questions.

9 Even though he leads us to the answers by telling the stories of characters that are convincing and fully capable of engaging the reader s interest in their destiny, he manages somehow to explore mechanisms that are structural and not personal. Despite the attention for Khrushchev and other his-torical figures from the Soviet Union, the personal vignettes are embedded in a narrative in which science, even more so than the idea of plenty is the hero. This is perhaps best rep-resented in by the prominent and fairly convincing character and the fate of the mathematician and economist Kantorovich. Other Red plenty characters remain, as the planner Maksim Mokhov, a confabulated embodiment of (the) institution (395).

10 5In contrast to many other books written about the Soviet period and especially about Stalinism, Spufford s account is not emotional, grim and dramatic, does not aim to show the suffering of ordinary people or their disillusionment with the system as has already been done with unrivalled mastery by the classical works of Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak or Bulgakov, to name but a few. Instead, he shows the various characters influ-enced not so much by the cruel decisions, but by the dreams of the communist leaders. The leaders who, in accordance with Marxist dogma, pretended (Stalin) or hoped (Khrushchev) that they were social scientists and in Spufford s interpretation harbored dreams of achieving abundance for all Red plenty .