Humour and protest: Jokes under communism

International Review of Social History

Volumn 52, Issue SUPPL. 15, 2007, Pages 291-305

  Davies, Christie ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 36549052557     PISSN: 00208590     EISSN: 1469512X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020859007003252     Document Type: Article

References (105)

1. Peter Deriabin and Frank Gibney, The Secret World (London, i960), appendix giving sample reports on joke-tellers filed by KGB case officers;
2. Elliott Oring, "Risky Business, Political Jokes Under Repressive Regimes", Western Folklore, 63 (2004), pp. 209-236.
3. Robert Cochran, "'What Courage!': Romanian'Our Leader'Jokes", The Journal of American Folklore, 142:405 (1989), pp. 259-279, 270;
4. Antoine and Philippe Meyer, Le communisme est-il soluble dans l'alcool (Paris, 1978), p. 110.
5. For Stalin's time see Robert Thurston, "Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1935-1941", Journal of Social History, 25 (1991), pp. 541-562, 541, 544, 550.
6. For the later period see Vladimir Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power: The Post-Stalin Era (London, 1990), p. 72.
7. Juri viikberg, Anecdotes about Soviet Power and their Leaders, Collected from Estonia, 1960-1986 (Talinn, 1997), p. 3,
8. see also Arvo Krikmann, Netinalju Stalinist (Tartu, 2004), p. 38;
9. and idem, "Jokes in Soviet Estonia" (paper presented at the 18th ISHS conference at the Danish University of Education, Copenhagen, July 2006), p. 1.
10. Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia, Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934-1941 (Cambridge, 1997);
11. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York, 1999).
12. Krikmann, Netinalju Stalinist, p. 241.
13. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, p. 183.
14. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, II (London, 2005), p. 476;
15. Nikolai Zlobin, "Humor as Political Protest", Demokratizatsiya, 4 (1996), pp. 223-231, 224.
16. R.J. Rummel, Lethal Politics, Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder (New Brunswick, NJ, 1990).
17. See Bruce Adams, Tiny Revolutions in Russia, Twentieth Century Soviet and Russian History in Anecdotes (New York, 2005);
18. William Henry Charaberlin, '"The Anecdote': Unrationed Soviet Humor", Russian Review, 16:3 (1957), pp. 27-34;
19. David A.Harris and Izrail Rabinovich, The Jokes of Repression, The Humour of Soviet Jews (Northvale, NJ, 1988);
20. I.D.W. Talmadge, "The Enjoyment of Laughter in Russia", Russian Review, 2:2 (1943), pp. 45-51.
21. See Miron Dolon, Execution by Hunger (New York, 1985).
22. See Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties (Harmondsworth, 1971);
23. Boris Levytsky, The Uses of Terror (London, 1971).
24. See Anatoly Vaksberg, Stalin against the Jews (New York, 1994).
25. See S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia, pp. 15,46-47;
26. Victor Zaslavsky, The Neo-Stalinist State: Class, Ethnicity and Consensus in Soviet Society (New York, 1982), pp. 46-47.
27. Krikmann, Jokes in Soviet Estonia, pp. 2-3;
28. Victor Raskin, Semantic Mechanisms of Humor (Dordrecht, 1985), pp. 23-24;
29. Alexei Yurchak, "The Cynical. Reason of Late Socialism: Power, Pretence and the Anekdot", Public Culture, 9 (1997), p. 175. It should be kept in mind that earlier jokes may have not been recorded and that the later ones will include adapted, recycled material.
30. Alan Dundes, "Laughter Behind the Iron Curtain", Ukrainian Quarterly, 27 (1971), pp. 50-59, 51.
31. C. Banc (pseudonym) and Alan Dundes, First Prize: Fifteen Years! (Cranbury, NJ, 1986), p. 14.
32. See n. 15.
33. Elena F. Hellberg, "The Other Way Round: The Jokelore of Radio Yerevan", ARV Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore, 41 (1985), pp. 89-104, 92-93.
34. Alex Beam, Introduction to Arie Zand, Political Jokes of Leningrad (Austin, TX, 1982), pp. i-iii;
35. Emil Draitser, Forbidden Laughter (Los Angeles, CA, 1978), pp. 3-5;
36. Shlapentokh, Soviet Intellectuals and Political Power, p. 114;
37. Yurchak, "The Cynical Reason of Late Socialism", pp. 174, 179.
38. Conquest, The Great Terror, p. 423.
39. Joshua Rubinstein, The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg (New York, 1996), pp. 171-172.
40. Cochran, "'What Courage!'", p. 272. See also Dundes, Laughter Behind the Iron Curtain;
41. Banc and Dundes, First Prize: Fifteen Years!
42. P. Garcia (Jose Garcia Martinez), Los Chistes de Franco (Madrid, 1977).
43. Stanley G. Payne, The Franco Regime 1975 (London, 2000), pp. 622-627;
44. Oriol Pi-Sunyer, "Political Humor in a Dictatorial State: The Case of Spain", Ethnohistory, 24 (1977), pp. 179-190, 179.
45. Stanley H. Brandes, "Peaceful Protest: Spanish Political Humor in a Time of Crisis", Western Folklore, 35 (1977), pp. 331-346, 33 5-337;
46. Pi-Sunyer, "Political Humor in a Dictatorial State", pp. 182-189.
47. Adams, Tiny Revolutions in Russia;
48. Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives!: The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, MA, 1984), pp. 263-269.
49. Adams, Tiny Revolutions in Russia, Banc and Dundes, First Prize: Fifteen Years!
50. S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia, pp. 23-30, 109;
51. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, pp. 2-9;
52. and see Lesley A Rimmel, "Another Kind of Fear: The Kirov Murder and the End of Bread Rationing in Leningrad", Slavic Review, 56 (1997), pp. 481-489.
53. Richard. V. Burks, "The Coming Crisis in the Soviet Union", in Alexander Shtromas and Morton Kaplan (eds), The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future, 4 vols, I (New York, 1989), pp. 115-165, 122;
54. Zaslavsky, The Neo-Stalinist State, pp. 52-53, 100, 123.
55. S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia, pp. 18, 31;
56. Thurston, Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule, pp. 551-553.
57. S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia, p. 31.
58. Chamberlin, "The Anecdote", p. 27;
59. Oring, "Risky Business", p. 216;
60. Jacquin Sanders, "The Tactful. Satirists", East Europe, 11:2 (1962), pp. 22-27;
61. Jacquin Sanders, "The Seriousness of Humor: Political Satire in the Soviet Bloc", East Europe-Euromonitor, 11 (1982), pp. 21-29;
62. Talmadge, "The Enjoyment of Laughter in Russia", p. 46.
63. S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia, pp. 17, 140-141;
64. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, p. 180;
65. Rimmel, "Another Kind of Fear", pp. 493-499; and see Jaroslaw Pieckalkiewicz, Public Opinion Polling in Czechoslovakia (New York, 1972).
66. Christie Davies, The Mirth of Nations (New Brunswick, NJ, 2002), pp. 221-222, 227-228.
67. André Clément, Les 100 meilleures histoires de l'occupation (Paris, 1945);
68. Kathleen Stokker, Folklore Fights the Nazis, Humor in Occupied Norway, ¡940-1945 (Cranbury, NJ, 1995), pp. 22-23.
69. Antonin J. Obrdlik, "'Gallows Humor': A Sociological Phenomenon", The American Journal of Sociology, 45:5 (1942), pp. 709-716, 709, 712, 716.
70. Chad Bryant, "The Language of Resistance: Czech Jokes and Joke-Telling under Nazi Occupation, 1943-45", Journal of Contemporary History, 41 (2006), pp. 133-151, 133-139.
71. George Mikes, foreword to Stephen Lukes and Itzhak Galnoor, No Laughing Matter: A Collection of Political Jokes (New York, 1985), p. vii;
72. Pi-Sunyer, "Political Humor in a Dictatorial State", pp. 183-187;
73. Zlobin, "Humor as Political Protest", p. 223.
74. Cochrane, "'What Courage!'", p. 272;
75. Emil Draitser, "Soviet Underground Jokes as a Means of Entertainment", Journal of Popular Culture, 23 (1989) pp. 117-125, 118;
76. Alexander Rose, "When Politics is a Laughing Matter", Policy Review, no (2001-2002), pp. 50-71, 7-8;
77. Hans Speier, "Wit and Politics; An Essay on Laughter and Power", American Journal of Sociology, 103:5 (1998) pp. 1352-1401, 1395.
78. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 71-96.
79. See S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia, pp. 174-177;
80. see also Michael Schiff, Radio Eriwans, Auslands-Program (Frankfurt, 1975);
81. idem, Radio Eriwans antwortet (Frankfurt, 1.978).
82. Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA, 1984), pp. 307-314;
83. Sue Vice, Introducing Bakhtin (Manchester, 1997), pp. 152-154.
84. Speir, "Wit and Politics", p. 1395.
85. Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society in the Soviet Case (Cambridge, 1981), p. 130.
86. Draitser, "Soviet Underground Jokes", p. 118.
87. Cochran, "'What Courage!'", p. 272;
88. Speir, "Wit and Politics", p. 1399.
89. See also discussion in Oring, "Risky Business", pp. 222-223.
90. Robert Littell (ed.), The Czech Black Book, Prepared by the Institute of History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (London, 1969), p. 111;
91. Stokker, Folklore Fights the Nazis, pp. 207-210.
92. Yurchak, "The Cynical Reason of Late Socialism", p. 163.
93. Nicolai Tolstoy, Stalin's Secret War (London, 1981), pp. 150-154;
94. Yurchak, "The Cynical Reason of Late Socialism", p. 166.
95. Alexander Shtromas, Political Change and Social Development: The Case of the Soviet Union (Frankfurt, 1981), p. 100.
96. S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia, pp. 94-101.
97. Rummel, Lethal Politics, pp. 57-58;
98. Alexander Shtromas, "The Baltic States as Soviet Republics: Tensions and Contradictions", in Graham Smith (ed.), The Baltic States: The National Self-Determination of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 86-117, 89-90;
99. Tolstoy, Stalin's Secret War, p. 242.
100. See Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement (Cambridge, 1989).
101. Shtromas, Political Change and Social Development.
102. Christie Davies, "Humor for the Future and a Future for Humor", in Shtromas and Kaplan, The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future, III, pp. 299-319. The paper was submitted in 1.985. The conference papers were published in 1989 in four volumes of about 750 pages each.
103. Cf. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven, CT, 1985).
104. Dcriabin and Gibncy, The Secret World, pp. 38, 61, 141, 175, 220, 227;
105. Thuriton, Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule, p. 594.