Russian political jokes are a part of Russian humour and can be grouped into the major time periods: Imperial Russia, Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. In the Soviet period political jokes were a form of social protest, mocking and criticising leaders, the system and its ideology, myths and rites. Quite a few political themes can be found among other standard categories of Russian joke, most notably Rabinovich jokes and Radio Yerevan.

Russian Empire

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 (Russian traditional songs) 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

In the Soviet Union, telling political jokes could be regarded as a type of extreme sport: according to Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), "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.

Communism

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: (Proshla zima, nastalo leto / Spasibo partii za eto!) 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. This is another joke about how disastrous the consequences of collectivisation were on Russia's food supply, how Trotsky wanted to treat peasants harshly to uplift workers, Bukharin vice versa, and how capitalist countries were still faring well in spite of this.

Gulag

Gulag Archipelago

Alexander Solzhenitsyn'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 (gulag inmates). Some examples:

Censorship

Armenian Radio

The Armenian Radio 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.

Pravda and Izvestia

From the 1960s until the early 1980s, the Soviet Union had only three newspapers: the Pravda ("Truth"), the Izvestia ("News"), and the Krasnaya Zvezda ("Red Star"). All three were controlled and censored by the government, leading Soviet citizens to joke: 'There's no news in "Truth", and there's no truth in "News".'. Variant translations include: 'In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth'.

Political figures

Lenin

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 (Lenin never had children of his own), 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.

Stalin

Jokes about Stalin usually refer to his paranoia and contempt for human life. Stalin's words are typically pronounced with a heavy Georgian accent.

Khrushchev

Jokes about Nikita Khrushchev often relate to his attempts to reform the economy, especially to introduce maize (corn). He was even called kukuruznik ('maizeman'). 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.

Brezhnev

Leonid Brezhnev 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."

Geriatric leadership

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 (he was eventually attached to a dialysis machine), several jokes made the rounds:

Gorbachev

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 ("Satan's mark"), Raisa Gorbacheva's poking her nose everywhere, and Soviet-American relations.

Washington region committee

"The Soviet Union is the homeland of elephants"

In its declaration of national glories, the Soviet government claimed at various times, such as through Pravda publications, to have invented the airplane, steam engine, radio, and lightbulb, and promoted the pseudoscientific agricultural claims of Lysenko as part of Stalinist pseudohistory. This was joked about in the phrase "Homeland of Elephants" from the early 1940s, sardonically claiming that the Soviet Union was also the birthplace of elephants. An anecdote from Andrei Sakharov includes "(1) classics of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism on elephants; (2) Russia, the elephants' homeland, (3) the Soviet elephant, the world's best elephant (4) the Belorussian elephant, the Russian elephant's little brother." The joke has persisted in the form of "Russia is the homeland of elephants" (.)

KGB

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:

Daily Soviet life

Some jokes ridiculed the level of 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. The above joke was famously mentioned by US President Ronald Reagan multiple times.

Russian Federation

From at least 2015, it is common in Russia to joke about the "battle between the television and the refrigerator (битва холодильника с телевизором)." This refers to the balance between state media and actual living conditions in Russia: whether state propaganda on TV is able to overcome the presence of empty fridges.

Boris Yeltsin

Jokes about Boris Yeltsin commonly revolved around the economic shocks caused by privatisation, the rapid democratisation of the Russian political scene, and corruption and authoritarianism by Yeltsin's government.

Vladimir Putin

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:

Sources