Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

The view of the Soviet Union when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's is that there was a dearth of commercial goods and a plethora of lines to get even basic goods. The author points out that westerners didn't always see it that way. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union was growing faster than any other country except Japan. This strange, risky and compelling book, which is effectively a collection of vignettes to illustrate what the Soviet economy of the 1950s and 60s was like, both in theory and then in practice. the book highlights the materialism of Khrushchev's project and, indeed, the Russian admiration for American consumerism that predated his rule. For all the idealism, brilliance and ingenuity of the minds that tried to fashion a Marxist utopia on the ruins of post-second world war Russia, the greater part of the book is given over to why and how the Soviet communist project failed.