Quando o socialismo parecia funcionar: Red Plenty, by Francis Spufford

Até o início dos anos 1960, o socialismo podia realmente aparentar uma via de desenvolvimento para países pobres, e assim agíamos, nós, os esquerdistas, animados por um sincero desejo de desenvolvimento com justiça social, numa via que aparentemente evitaria as injustiças e crises do capitalismo, em favor de um modelo de administração racional da produção econômica e da distribuição socialmente igualitária dos bens produzidos sob comando do Estado, e não de capitalistas supostamente egoístas e exploradores.
Depois, a realidade começou a se impor, também no terreno econômico, pois já sabíamos que no plano político não havia liberdade de expressão, nem de organização política, o que era considerado, entretanto, como um preço a pagar pelo rápido desenvolvimento econômico.
Tudo foi uma "aldeia Potenkim", ou seja, a maior fraude econômica e política do mundo, num contexto de opressão jamais vista em tiranias antigas.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Red Plenty

Francis Spufford

The Soviet Union was founded on a fairytale. It was built on 20th-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the penny-pinching lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late fifties, the magic seemed to be working.
Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came and went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan, every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche and sputniks would lead the way to the stars. It's about the scientists who did their best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending.

• Faber & Faber; August 2010
• ISBN: 9780571269471
• Read online, or download in secure EPUB format
• Title: Red Plenty
• Author: Francis Spufford
• Imprint: Faber & Faber

About The Author

Francis Spufford, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year (1997), has edited two acclaimed literary anthologies and a collection of essays about the history of technology. His first book, I May Be Some Time, won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. His second, The Child That Books Built, gave Neil Gaiman 'the peculiar feeling that there was now a book I didn't need to write'. His third, Backroom Boys, was called 'as nearly perfect as makes no difference' by the Daily Telegraph and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize. 

His fourth, Red Plenty was called 'odd, brilliant and crazily brave' in the Evening Standard, longlisted for the Orwell Prize and translated into eight languages. His latest book, Unapologetic, was described by Nick Hornby as 'an incredibly smart, challenging, and beautiful book'. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge.