The vanishing dream
"As ambitious as a Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant - and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne." Thus the blurb on the inside of the dust cover of this most unusual book, and, for once, it sums it up pretty well. This is history, history of a brief moment in Soviet life, just after the worst shackles of stalinism had fallen away and just before - so it seemed - the command economy started at last to deliver the shiny consumerist future rashly promised by Nikita Krushchev. You know it is a history because there of masses of endnotes, and entire sections in italics which explain historical developments. But though the endnotes give you precise sources and references, they often also say things like: "this was actually said three years earlier by this character as a different conference, but it seemed to fit better into my story here," or "I made this up, but it sums up what was happening better than any of the actual events"...
