Red Plenty

Copyright © 2010 by Francis Spufford
First published by Faber and Faber Ltd, London
This publication is made possible in part by a grant provided by
the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the
Minnesota State Legislature from the Minnesota general fund and
its arts and cultural hericage fund with money from the vote of the
people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008, and a gram from the
Wells Fargo Foundation of Minnesoca. Significant support has also
been provided by the National Endowment for the Am; Target;
the McKnight Foundation; and other generous contributions from
foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations
and individuals we offer our heanfclc thanks.
ARTWORKS.
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Published by Graywolf Press
250 TI1ird Avenue North, Suite 600
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401
All rights reserved.
www.graywolfpress.org
Published in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-55597-604·0
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 I
First Graywolf Priming, 2012
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011942042
Cover design: Alvaro Villanueva
C over photo: Triumphant Yottth, USSR circa 1960. 0 The Dmitri
Balccrmams Collection/Corbis
For my mother
Afr Chairman, 1959
2.
Mr Chairman, 1959
Such a long journey. It was hard to sleep in the cuccing roar of
the turboprops, hard to sleep too with a headful of anticipations
and anxieties, but he dozed in che end, the noise following him
somehow into the kingdom on the far side of oblivion, still
pulsing and beating in his ears as he hurried from room to room
of a half-finished palace, constructed (he was glad to sec) using
rhe large-panel method he had recomme;:nded in his speech on
architecture; and when he woke, the bright lighr of a morning
high above the Atlantic was pouring in through che window of
the airliner, making his eyeballs ache. He blinked, and tugged at
his waistband. The vinyl seat had grown sticky. Around him, rhe
encourage stirred into life as well, shifting co attention when they
noticed chat his eyes were open. But he did not need anything.
The prt:parations were all done. Nina Petrovna, beside him, did
nor move, yet he knew that if he curned his head he would find
her ready to hear whatever was on his mind, as she had been
gravely ready their entire married life, knowing che importance
of his work: ac every midnight, at every dawn, in the middle of
any fumily sicuarion. He bent towards the window, and flattened
his cheek against the cold glass co get a downward view. A few
whitecaps were shrugging in and our of existence on a wide grey
sea. A little black doc was tossing among them, and another was
visible in the distance up a11ead, along the line of the plane's
Right: the trawlers, he supposed, strung our across the sea by
securicy when he cold them he didn't want the navy deployed.
'How much longer?' he asked.
'Still about an hour to the Canadian co.ist, Nikita Scrgeycvich,
and then two more after chat to Washingcon,' said young
18
Troyanovsky the interpreter, eagerly. He was a good boy, almost
American-looking himself in his buttoned.down shirt collar,
and you could tell he wanted che work to start, so he could show
whac he was made of. Thar was a good acricude, he choughc. Noc
much different from me, he thought. He rubbed his eyes and
gazed up the plane. The engines sang ouc the same obliterating
music. Along the aisle the lads from the Tupolev bureau were
still intcndy listening to it through cheir headphones, crouched
over an electrical box chat had been explained to him as a kind
of stethoscope for aeroplanes. They did not seem to be worried
by what they were hearing in the cwining screams of noise. Bue
then he did not really see what they would be able to do if the
remote chance they were guarding against came true, if the plane
did suddenly crack at the scams in mid-air. The sky would be
full of falling generals and diplomats, and him in the midst of
chem, plummeting to che waves in his summer suit, like a leadweighted Easter egg. 'We're sure of che TU-114, as sure as we can
be,' Tupolev himself had cold him. 'h's just chat it's a new design,
we're still shaking it down, and we've had some readings from
the airframe we weren't expecting. That's why I'd like co send
my son along, with your permission, to keep an eye on things.'
'Thac isn't necessary,' he'd replied. 'People will chink he's some
sort of hostage!' 'Oh, no question of chat, Nikita Scrgeyevich. I
just wane co show you chat we have confidence in che plane.' The
plane was bigger than any passenger jet che Americans had. The
plane was irresistible. And so Tupolcv junior had come along
for the ride - and there he was wich che ocher technicians now,
feeling che drowsy gaze resting on him; and looking up; and
dearly not knowing what expression he should hoist hastily onco
his face. He didn't blame him. What was the right demeanour
for someone who was nor-a-hostage? Especially since, co cell the
truth, the boy would have been a hostage in this sicuacion, or at
lease a surecy, just a few years ago. He frowned. Tupolev's son
instantly dropped his eyes.
RED PLENTY
Such a long journey. Such a long way travelled, he thought,
since he had been a quick kid himself, the kid on the coalfield
with the home-made motorbike and three gold roubles in his
pocket on a Friday, and the fluffy white duckdown hair. (Th11t
hadn't lasted long.) Such a long journey to chis point in rime
for the whole counrry; and none of it easy, none of it achieved
without cost. No one gave us chis beautiful plane. We built it
ourselves, we pulled it out of nothing by our determination and
our strength. They cried to crush us over and over again, bur
we wouldn't be crushed. We drove off the Whites. We winkled
ouc the priests, out of che churches and more important ouc of
people's minds. We got rid of che shopkeepers, thieving bastards,
getting their dirty fingers in every deal, making every straight
thing crooked. We dragged che farmers into che rwenriech
century, and char was hard, that was a cruel business and chcre
were some hungry years there, but it had co be done, we had to
get the muck off our boors. We realised there were saboteurs
and enemies among us, and we caught them, but ic drove us
mad for a while, and for a while we were seeing enemies and
saboteurs everywhere, and hurting people who were brothers,
sisters, good friends, honest comrades. Then the Fascists came,
and scamping on them was bloody, nobody could call what we
did chcn sweetness and light, wreckage cvcr}'\vherc, but what
arc you going co do when a gang of murderers breaks inro che
house? And the Boss didn't help much. Wonderful clear mind,
but by that time he was frankly screwy, moving whole nations
round the map like chess pieces, making us sir up all night wich
him and drink chat filchy vodka rill we couldn't ~cc straight, and
always wacching us: no, r don't deny we wenr wrong, in fucc
if you recall ic was me chat said so. Bue all che while we were
building. All che while we were building factories and mines,
railroads and roads, towns and cirics, and all without any help,
all wichouc getting the say-so from any millionaire or bigshot.
We did chat. We taught people co read, we taught them to love
/Vlr Chairman, 1959
culture. We sent cens of millions of chem co school and millions
of them co college, so they could have the advantages we never
had. We created che boys and girls who're young now. We did the
dircy work so they could inherit a clean world.
And now was cite rime when it all paid off, he thought.
The wars were over, the enemies were gone, the mistakes were
rectified. Forcy-rwo years since the revolution, and at lase the
pattern of che new society was established. All the young people
had known no other way of living. They had never seen a rich
man going past in his carriage; they had never seen a private
shop. And so at last ic was becoming possible to make good on
all the promises which they'd fed co people during che hungry
years. All well and good, he thought, because we really meant
them, we weren't crying co hoodwink anyone, bur there's a limit
to how long you can keep going on chat kind of diet. You can't
make soup our of promises. Some comrades seemed to think
that fine words and fine ideas were all the world would ever
require, char pure enthusiasm would carry humanity forward
co happiness: well excuse me, comrades, but aren't we supposed
to be materialises? Aren't we supposed co be che ones who get
along wirhour fuiryrales? [f communism couldn't give people a
better life chan capitalism, he personally couldn't see the point. A
better life, in a scraighcforward, practical way: better food, better
cloches, better houses, better cars, better planes (like chis one),
better football games to watch and cards to play and beaches to
sit on, in rhe summertime, with the children splashing about in
chc surf and a nice boccie of something cold co sip. More money
co spend - or else more of a world in which money was no longer
necessary to ration out the good things, because there were so
many good things, all gushing our of the whatchamacallit, the
thing like a cone spilling over wich fruit. The horn of plenty.
Fortunately, the hard part of the task was nearly done. They had
almost completed rhe heavy lifting, they had heaved and shoved
and (yes) driven people on with kicks and curses, and they had
20
2.I
RED PLENTY
built che basis for che good life, their very own horn of plenty
pouring forch chc necessary steel and coal and electricity. They
had done the big scuff. All chat remained was co get che small
scuff right. le was time to use whac chey had builc co make life
a pleasure instead of a struggle. They could do ic. If they could
produce a million cons of steel, they could produce a million
cons of anything. They just had to concentrate on directing their
horn of plenty so chat, as well as spitting our girders, ic now also
overflowed with musical boxes. Now the sacrifices ended. Now
came che age of cream and dumplings: the old dream of a feast
that never had to end, but truly delivered, delivered in sober
daylight, by science.
It had already begun co happen, in his opinion. If you looked
at people on the street, all the old clothes had vanished, in che
last few years. No more patches, no more darns. Everyone was
wearing fine new outfits. The children had winter coats no one
had worn before chem. People had wrisrwatches on their arms,
like his own good steel wacch from the Kuibyshev plane. They
were moving in their droves out of the horrible old communal
flats, where four families shared a toilet and there were knifefighcs over who used the stove, inco pristine concrete apartment
buildings. Of course, there was still a long way co go. No one
knew that becter than him. He saw the figures the economises
prepared. A Russian worker still only earned around 25% of
the average American income, even if you threw in the most
generous allowance for all the things thac cost money in America
and came free in the Soviet Union. But he saw che other figures
too, the ones showing chat year after year this last decade che
Soviet economy had grown at 6%, ]'Yo, 8% every year, while
che American one only grew 3°/o or so ac best. He was nae a
man who was naturally excited by graphs, but he was excited
by this one, when he understood that if the Soviet Union just
kept growing at che same race, propelled onward by che greater
natural efficiency ofcentral planning, the line ofSoviet prosperity
22
Mr Chairman, 1959
on che graph was due co cross the line representing American
prosperity, and chen to soar above it, in just under twenty years
from now. He had seen victory on a sheet of cardboard. le was
proven. It was going to happen. And chis was the reason, deep
down, why he had accepted President Eisenhower's invitation,
when some might have asked whether they were ready for the
test that was waiting for chem in America: noc just the test of
negotiating with the richest, strongest capitalist state on the
planet, but chc deeper test, the test of comparison. Were they
ready to measure up the Sovicc way against the American way?
Were they ready to Ice the people see a little bit of the scale of
the task that still lay ahead? In his opinion, if you believed char
che good times were coming, if you crusted that graph, ic was
necessary now to behave like ic. le was necessary to make an act
of faith. The people had earned the right co a bit of trust. He
had said yes co chc American exhibition in Sokolniki Park, chis
year, because he crusted che Soviet citizens who were going to
visit it. Lee chem sec the best the Americans can do. Lee chem sec
what they're com peeing with. Let them see what chey're going co
gee themselves, in not coo long, and more besides. Lee the dog
sec che rabbit. Let chem feel a bit hungry for the future. Maybe
they'd pick up some ideas. It was always good to learn from the
Americans.
So, yes, he believed they were ready. Overtake and surpass,
che Boss used co say, again and again. Overtake a11d surpass.
The strategy was still the same. The difference was chat now
it was more than a goal. Now it was happening. Accordingly,
he had a deal he was going co offer the Americans. He thought
the Americans would cake it. He didn't sec why they wouldn't.
The deal was chis. Since the great quarrel between capitalism
and socialism was really an economic one, why not conduce it
chat way, instead of as a war? Why not handle it as a race to
sec who could do the best job at supplying the ordinary fellow
on the beach with his cold drink? The two sides could co-exist
23