Red Plenty - Francis Spufford

A wonderfully innovative historical novel that blends fact and fiction set in the 1950's & 60's when it seemed,  at first, that Soviet communism and its planned economy was about to overtake America and its capitalist economy and fulfil the workers dream of a fair and prosperous society.

Soviet planners, economists, physicists and mathematicians flourished in the thaw initiated by Khrushchev following Stalin's death. They persuaded the Soviet leadership that, using cybernetic principles and the newly developed computers, the centralised, planned Soviet economy could at last be made efficient. By 1980, Khrushchev claimed, the Soviet Union would overtake America; communism would have defeated capitalism. For a while, in the aftermath of Sputnik and Gagarin's space flight, it looked as if he might be just be right.

Red Plenty explores why things didn't work out like that.