Moscow 2042

This is a satire on Soviet communism, mocking the slogans, habits of thought and practice in the Stalinist and post-Stalin eras. As such, it is very funny in places for anyone who is familiar with the Soviet way of life, but is nevertheless somewhat over long in my view and a little dull and repetitive in places.

This is an unfortunate book. Published when the Soviet Regime was tottering and on the verge of collapse (and before Perestroika and Glasnost) its satire is dated and relies too much in the reader being intimately familier with the regime it was mocking. To anyone else, it is tough going as there is insufficient exposition about the object of its lampoon.Thus its target audience seems to be restricted to former citizens of the Soviet Union and the people who studied it intensly in the West. Perhaps in the original Russian it was a hoot but its translation into English took away its satirical edge.As a lampoon of Utopia/Dystopia it is not in the same league as Leacock or Swift. As an indictment on totaliarism it is outpaced by Orwell, although its comment about 1984 being about an efficient totalitarian regime is perceptive. There is no such thing as an efficient totalitarian regime unless it is dedicated to terrorising or tranquilising its subjects and also there is nothing better outside of the regime.The Soviet Union is history and it former subjects will be in a few decades. Then this book will be completely incomprehensible, which is not something you can say about Orwell, Swift or Huxley. Read this book only if you are able to name all the members of the last politburo, without cheating. There was Gorbachev, and er...the other guys.