Under Lenin, life was like a tunnel: darkness all around, the light far away; under Stalin, it was like a tram: just one line and everyone trembling; under Khrushchev, it was like a circus: one person talking and everyone else laughing; under Brezhnev, it was like at the movies: everybody was waiting for the words The End…
From one-liners to funny stories, derision has also been one of the main resorts of peoples confronted with dramatic situations, adversity, and above all, oppression. Where hope is in short supply, laughter allows people to hold on, and even to take some revenge on adversity. From the moment of Lenin’s victorious October Revolution to the collapse of the regime that Gorbachev was attempting to reform, in 1991, Communism lead, in both the USSR and its satellites, to a profusion of humorous anecdotes, including many devastating ones. They poke fun at various aspects of life in the USSR, from political repression to the insoluble challenges of daily life, via sexuality and an ideology whose shortcomings are all gone over with a fine-tooth comb. In so doing, they speak volumes about the state of mind of a society that had learned – or rather made a fine art of – double talk – sometimes to the point of schizophrenia.
Jokes obviously weren’t what brought down Communism, but still, over the course of these laughter-studded pages, you’ll realize to what extent they contributed to its downfall.

A Soviet history from the point of view of humor, coming out for the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution.