Pity that so few of these were realized within that (never-really-Proletariat-) Dictatorship
while
(never close-to achieving real Socialism, never mind Communism) despite incessant pretense to the contrary.

Given:
the idiosyncratic nature of Red Plenty and the selection of individuals whom the author deemed relevant to a partial glimpse of the zeitgest at key events
--and given the fact that this was in no way meant to be either a documentary nor The Compleat History from Tsar through Stalin (and the subsequent walking cadavers) ... ...

What were your conclusions (re 'issues' that bothered you Then) ? ..about Mr. Spufford's kaleidoscopic buffet
(and his italicized Intros all interspersed.)
Quite different means of communication which, we saw: requires in-brain synthesis ever to derive any Aha!s

Any glaring errors/mischaracterizations as irked?

Also wonder if you've seen Europe Central with--among many other things--its illustration of being 'famous' yet Watched the more intensely..
that-all interspersed with the Operatic-grade inner-music/love/poitical-life of Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich as leitmotif, a Stalin summing-up
and much more re WW-!! protagonists.
(That is a Tome, but I'm glad I persevered--some priceless passages. And we are left free to draw whatever Conclusions--no pre-digested ones.)

BOTH! these books will flummox the easily distracted, those wanting instant entertainment (or just attention-span deprived)
yet I found these (with only a few breaks) engrossing as any novel. And USSR is a magnum-focus of both.

('Course, even with these viewpoints--I know that I don't know shit about N+100 other aspects to that lengthy fucking-over of millions)
--maybe too much time spent cataloguing the Home-disaster-Front: same kind of Pure-shit, dumbed-down/obfuscated similarly.

But.. the US IS Exceptional!



..in the huge variety of Stinks of that grade-of-shit emanated here, in the land of diversity.