Russian political jokes


Russian political jokes are a part of Russian humour and can be grouped into the major time periods: Imperial Russia, Soviet Union and finally post-Soviet Russia. Quite a few political themes can be found among other standard categories of Russian joke, most notably Rabinovich jokes and Radio Yerevan.

Imperial Russia

In Imperial Russia, most political jokes were of the polite variety that circulated in educated society. Few of the political jokes of the time are recorded, but some were printed in a 1904 German anthology.
There were also numerous politically themed Chastushki in Imperial Russia.
In Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, the fictional author of the "Foreword", Charles Kinbote, cites the following Russian joke:
He comments on the uncanny linguistic parallelism between the English-language "crown-crow-cow" and the Russian "korona–vorona–korova".

Soviet Union

Every nation enjoys political jokes, but in the Soviet Union telling political jokes could be regarded as type of extreme sport: according to Article 58, "anti-Soviet propaganda" was a potentially capital offense.
Ben Lewis claims that the political conditions in the Soviet Union were responsible for the unique humour produced there; according to him, "Communism was a humour-producing machine. Its economic theories and system of repression created inherently amusing situations. There were jokes under fascism and the Nazis too, but those systems did not create an absurd, laugh-a-minute reality like communism."

Early Soviet times

Jokes from these times have a certain historical value, depicting the character of the epoch almost as well as long novels might.
According to Marxist–Leninist theory, communism in the strict sense is the final stage of evolution of a society after it has passed through the socialism stage. The Soviet Union thus cast itself as a socialist country trying to build communism, which was supposed to be a classless society.
Satirical verses and parodies made fun of official Soviet propaganda slogans.
Russian:
Some jokes allude to notions long forgotten. These relics are still funny, but may look strange.
This joke is an allusion to the consequences of the collectivization policy pursued by Joseph Stalin between 1928 and 1933.

Gulag

's book Gulag Archipelago has a chapter entitled "Zeks as a Nation", which is a mock ethnographic essay intended to "prove" that the inhabitants of the Gulag Archipelago constitute a separate nation according to "the only scientific definition of nation given by comrade Stalin". As part of this research, Solzhenitsyn analyzes the humor of zeks. Some examples:
or "Radio Yerevan" jokes have the format, "ask us whatever you want, we will answer you whatever we want". They supply snappy or ambiguous answers to questions on politics, commodities, the economy or other subjects that were taboo during the Communist era. Questions and answers from this fictitious radio station are known even outside Russia.
Jokes about Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, typically made fun of characteristics popularized by propaganda: his supposed kindness, his love of children, his sharing nature, his kind eyes, etc. Accordingly, in jokes Lenin is often depicted as sneaky and hypocritical. A popular joke set-up is Lenin interacting with the head of the secret police, Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, in the Smolny Institute, the seat of the revolutionary communist government in Petrograd, or with khodoki, peasants who came to see Lenin.
Jokes about Stalin usually refer to his paranoia and contempt for human life. Stalin's words are typically pronounced with a heavy Georgian accent.
Jokes about Nikita Khrushchev often relate to his attempts to reform the economy, especially to introduce maize. He was even called kukuruznik. Other jokes target the crop failures resulting from his mismanagement of agriculture, his innovations in urban architecture, his confrontation with the US while importing US consumer goods, his promises to build communism in 20 years, or simply his baldness and crude manners. Unlike other Soviet leaders, in jokes Khrushchev is always harmless.
was depicted as dim-witted, senile, always reading his speeches from paper, and prone to delusions of grandeur.
Quite a few jokes capitalized on the cliché used in Soviet speeches of the time: "Dear Leonid Ilyich".
During Brezhnev's time, the leadership of Communist Party became increasingly geriatric. By the time of his death in 1982, the median age of the Politburo was 70. Brezhnev's successor, Yuri Andropov, died in 1984. His successor, Konstantin Chernenko, died in 1985. Rabinovich said he did not have to buy tickets to the funerals, as he had a subscription to these events. As Andropov's bad health became common knowledge, several jokes made the rounds:
Mikhail Gorbachev was occasionally mocked for his poor grammar, but perestroika-era jokes usually made fun of his slogans and ineffective actions, his birth mark, Raisa Gorbachev's poking her nose everywhere, and Soviet-American relations.
Telling jokes about the KGB was considered to be like pulling the tail of a tiger.
Quite a few jokes and other humour capitalized on the fact that Soviet citizens were under KGB surveillance even when abroad:
Some jokes ridiculed the level indoctrination in the Soviet Union's education system:
Quite a few jokes poke fun at the permanent shortages in various shops.
A subgenre of the above-mentioned type of joke targets long sign-up queues for certain commodities, with wait times that could be counted in years rather than weeks or months.

Boris Yeltsin

Yeltsin presided over the gutting and corruption of a lot of Russian government companies, which became target for jokes.
Many draw parallels between Vladimir Putin and Joseph Stalin: his opponents do it accusingly, while neo-Stalinists proudly. Many jokes about past Soviet leaders are retold about Putin: