Dec 30, 2019 10:47 PM
https://aeon.co/ideas/the-jokes-always-s...-of-stalin
EXCERPT: Stalinism. The word conjures dozens of associations, and ‘funny’ isn’t usually one of them. The ‘S-word’ is now synonymous with brutal and all-encompassing state control that left no room for laughter or any form of dissent. And yet, countless diaries, memoirs and even the state’s own archives reveal that people continued to crack jokes about the often terrible lives they were forced to live in the shadow of the Gulag.
By the 1980s, Soviet political jokes had become ... widely enjoyed ... But, 50 years earlier, under Stalin’s paranoid and brutal reign, why would ordinary Soviet people share jokes ridiculing their leaders and the Soviet system if they ran the risk of the NKVD (state security) breaking down the door to their apartment and tearing them away from their families, perhaps never to return? We now know that [...in public...] where people were constantly exhorted to show their absolute devotion to the Soviet cause, people cracked jokes that denigrated the regime and even Stalin himself.
Boris Orman, who worked at a bakery, provides a typical example... : [color=#660000Stalin was out swimming, but he began to drown. A peasant who was passing by jumped in and pulled him safely to shore. Stalin asked the peasant what he would like as a reward. Realising whom he had saved, the peasant cried out: ‘Nothing! Just please don’t tell anyone I saved you!’[/color]
Such a joke could easily – and in Orman’s case did – lead to a 10-year spell in a forced-labour camp, where prisoners were routinely worked to death. Paradoxically, the very repressiveness of the regime only increased the urge to share jokes that helped relieve tension and cope with harsh but unchangeable realities. Even in the most desperate times, as the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev later recalled: ‘The jokes always saved us.’
[...] Only if it served the goals of the revolution was humour considered useful and acceptable: as a delegate to the Soviet Writers’ Congress of 1934 summed up: ‘The task of Soviet comedy is to “kill with laughter” enemies and to “correct with laughter”’ those loyal to the regime. Nevertheless ... in the company of friends, and perhaps lubricated with a little vodka, it was frequently nigh-on impossible to resist taking things several steps further and to ridicule the stratospheric production targets, ubiquitous corruption and vast contradictions between the regime’s glittering promises and the grey and often desperate realities ordinary people encountered daily.
[...] From the mid-1930s onwards, the regime came to see political humour as a toxic virus with the potential to spread poison through the arteries of the country. ... Ordinary people had little chance of keeping pace with the regime’s paranoia. ... This style of retroactive ‘justice’ is something we can recognise today, when the uncompromising desire to make the world a better place can turn a thoughtless Tweet from 10 years ago into a professional and social death sentence. This is a far cry from the horrors of the Gulag, but the underlying principle is eerily similar.
However, like many of us today, the Soviet leaders misunderstood what humour is and what it actually does for people. Telling a joke about something is not the same as either condemning or endorsing it. [...] something the Stalinist regime failed to appreciate was that, because telling jokes could provide temporary relief from the pressures of daily life, in reality it often enabled Soviet citizens to do exactly what the regime expected of them: to keep calm and carry on.
When we tell jokes, we are often simply testing opinions or ideas that we are unsure of. They are playful and exploratory, even as they dance along – and sometimes over – the line of official acceptability. [...] We laugh in the darkest times, not because it can change our circumstances, but because it can always change how we feel about them. Jokes never mean only one thing, and the hidden story of political humour under Stalin is far more nuanced than a simple struggle between repression and resistance. (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: Stalinism. The word conjures dozens of associations, and ‘funny’ isn’t usually one of them. The ‘S-word’ is now synonymous with brutal and all-encompassing state control that left no room for laughter or any form of dissent. And yet, countless diaries, memoirs and even the state’s own archives reveal that people continued to crack jokes about the often terrible lives they were forced to live in the shadow of the Gulag.
By the 1980s, Soviet political jokes had become ... widely enjoyed ... But, 50 years earlier, under Stalin’s paranoid and brutal reign, why would ordinary Soviet people share jokes ridiculing their leaders and the Soviet system if they ran the risk of the NKVD (state security) breaking down the door to their apartment and tearing them away from their families, perhaps never to return? We now know that [...in public...] where people were constantly exhorted to show their absolute devotion to the Soviet cause, people cracked jokes that denigrated the regime and even Stalin himself.
Boris Orman, who worked at a bakery, provides a typical example... : [color=#660000Stalin was out swimming, but he began to drown. A peasant who was passing by jumped in and pulled him safely to shore. Stalin asked the peasant what he would like as a reward. Realising whom he had saved, the peasant cried out: ‘Nothing! Just please don’t tell anyone I saved you!’[/color]
Such a joke could easily – and in Orman’s case did – lead to a 10-year spell in a forced-labour camp, where prisoners were routinely worked to death. Paradoxically, the very repressiveness of the regime only increased the urge to share jokes that helped relieve tension and cope with harsh but unchangeable realities. Even in the most desperate times, as the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev later recalled: ‘The jokes always saved us.’
[...] Only if it served the goals of the revolution was humour considered useful and acceptable: as a delegate to the Soviet Writers’ Congress of 1934 summed up: ‘The task of Soviet comedy is to “kill with laughter” enemies and to “correct with laughter”’ those loyal to the regime. Nevertheless ... in the company of friends, and perhaps lubricated with a little vodka, it was frequently nigh-on impossible to resist taking things several steps further and to ridicule the stratospheric production targets, ubiquitous corruption and vast contradictions between the regime’s glittering promises and the grey and often desperate realities ordinary people encountered daily.
[...] From the mid-1930s onwards, the regime came to see political humour as a toxic virus with the potential to spread poison through the arteries of the country. ... Ordinary people had little chance of keeping pace with the regime’s paranoia. ... This style of retroactive ‘justice’ is something we can recognise today, when the uncompromising desire to make the world a better place can turn a thoughtless Tweet from 10 years ago into a professional and social death sentence. This is a far cry from the horrors of the Gulag, but the underlying principle is eerily similar.
However, like many of us today, the Soviet leaders misunderstood what humour is and what it actually does for people. Telling a joke about something is not the same as either condemning or endorsing it. [...] something the Stalinist regime failed to appreciate was that, because telling jokes could provide temporary relief from the pressures of daily life, in reality it often enabled Soviet citizens to do exactly what the regime expected of them: to keep calm and carry on.
When we tell jokes, we are often simply testing opinions or ideas that we are unsure of. They are playful and exploratory, even as they dance along – and sometimes over – the line of official acceptability. [...] We laugh in the darkest times, not because it can change our circumstances, but because it can always change how we feel about them. Jokes never mean only one thing, and the hidden story of political humour under Stalin is far more nuanced than a simple struggle between repression and resistance. (MORE - details)