The art of a Russian joke: anekdoty about perestroika, the nineties and Russian capitalism
we'll have to drink tea without sugar
Hello,
The popularity of the last post about anekdoty exceeded my wildest expectations. Naturally, there will be sequels now, and you’re in one of them. And I thought that an interesting approach would be to dive into Russian—and before that, Soviet—and even before that, again, Russian history and try to look at it through the prism of anekdoty.
***This is a long post that might be truncated in emails. I highly recommend you click on the title to read the whole thing without interruption.***
If you don’t know yet, anekdoty are short humorous stories. Some of them are political, some social, and some just feature favorite characters from pop culture. Although there certainly were masters who came up with “auteur anekdoty”, most of them can be considered true folk literature. Russian anekdoty were passed from person to person in an oral tradition, and during this process they were stripped of everything superfluous, like pebbles perfected by the sea of time.
Which is why, in my opinion, they can be a unique tool to understand what the people back then knew, thought, and felt.
This post will be about anekdoty from the period between the 1980s and 2000s.
Anekdoty about perestroika
There were several important topics at that time that found their reflection in folk humor. The main one was probably the omnipresent lack of food: with the gradual collapse of the Soviet Union, logistical chains of the huge country failed, and many places were left without access to produce.
1986. A guy walks into a pub and asks for a glass of beer.
- One ruble! - says the bartender.
- But why? Beer has always been 50 kopecks.
- Now it's like this: 50 kopecks for beer and 50 for perestroika!
The man, complaining, gives a ruble and gets 50 kopecks in change.
- ?
- No beer today!Vovochka was a very common anekdoty character, a little kid with a rebellious streak. The best description I could think of for him is “Soviet Bart Simpson.” We might have an entire post about Vovochka anekdoty one day. For now, this one seems relevant:
Vovochka comes home from school and asks his dad for a ruble. He asks why, and Vovochka replies that their school is collecting money for the starving children of Nicaragua. The father refuses to give the money. After a while Vovochka comes and says that the school is again collecting a ruble to help the communists of Nicaragua. Then his father gives him two roubles. When Vovochka brings them to school, the teacher asks why he had brought two rubles instead of one.
- Dad said, - answers Vovochka, - that if there are communists in Nicaragua, their children must be really starving.Upon conquering the Communism Peak, the climbers have indeed found communism there: there was a shortage of snow.Radio announcement: "Comrades, tonight at 5pm on the first programme on television you will be able to see a sausage sandwich".Reports to the KGB:
1970: Yesterday my neighbour ate caviar.
1980: Yesterday my neighbour ate sausage.
1990: Yesterday my neighbour ate something.Two dogs meet on the Poland-USSR border. One is running from Poland, the other from the Union. The first one asks:
- Where are you running to?
- I'm going to Poland. They say you have something to eat.
- No, - replies the second one, - we don't have anything. On the contrary, I'm running to you. They say you have food.
- No way! Our shops have been empty for a long time.
The Polish dog turns around and runs back. He turns his head and sees that the Russian dog is running after him.
- Why are you following me? I told you we have nothing, just as you.
- Well, at least you can bark there.This one is contributed by
:A man is waiting in a bread line and, after hours of waiting, gets to the front, only to discover they’re all out. Frustrated, he loudly curses the government. A retired KGB officer hears him and says:
- In my day, if you had said that, we’d have you shot!
The man goes home, and when his wife sees that he’s empty handed, she asks:
- Did they run out of bread again?
The man shakes his head and says:
- It’s worse. They’ve run out of bullets.The host asks his guests:
- Comrades, are you washing your hands with soap?
- Yes, of course.
- Well, then we'll have to drink tea without sugar.The last one strikes especially true: I was born near that time, and according to my mom, some of my first words were “talony na sahar” (“sugar stamps“). Just like these ones:
Anekdoty about the Soviet-Afghan War
This morbid topic has not escaped the anekdoty. Just like in the previous post, gallows humour reigns supreme.
During the night, the husband starts moaning in his sleep and wakes up screaming.
Wife through the dream:
- Did you dream about Afghanistan again?
- No, our wedding.The plane is carrying young recruits to Afghanistan. The pilot comes out, opens the door:
- Ok, you sons of bitches, jump out now.
- Pilot, what are you doing, we're still in the air! What's the altitude?
- 5000 meters. All right, I'll go down to 4000 for you. Below 3000, the previous recruits start jumping in.The Afghan war officer on a trip in the Soviet Union. He goes into a hairdresser's shop. The barber puts him in a chair:
- How is the situation in Afghanistan?
- It's normalising.
A few minutes later again:
- How's the situation in Afghanistan?
- It's normalising.
And again, and again...
He leaves after the haircut. The barber's colleagues ask:
- Why did you torture the man with these questionss?
- As soon as I ask about Afghanistan, his hair stands up on the back of his neck - it's much easier to cut it.Sherlock Holmes is a classic anekdoty character. We will definitely have a post just for anekdoty about him; they are some of my favorites. But for now, this one:
Holmes says to Watson:
- I see you've recently returned from Afghanistan, Watson.
- How did you guess, Holmes?!
- It's elementary, Watson. You're in a zinc coffin.Anekdoty about Gorbachev and other politicians
Of course, a huge part of anekdoty is about the political leadership.
Brezhnev meets Gromyko in the afterlife and asks:
- Who's ruling us now?
- Gorbachev.
- And who supports him?
- No one supports him, he walks on his own.Gorbachev visits the kolkhoz and makes a joke:
- Well, how are you living, comrades?
The farmers joke back:
- We live very well.Gorbachev speaks at the Congress.
- Comrades, in 1990 we will have no meat products. What do you propose to do? The hall is silent.
Suddenly a voice is heard:
- Let's work 10 hours a day.
Gorbachev:
- In 1991 we won't have milk. What do you suggest?
- We'll work 16 hours a day.
- And in 1992 there will be shortages of bread.
- We'll work 24 hours a day.
Gorbachev is getting emotional.
- Thank you, dear comrade, for your support. Where do you work?
- In the crematorium.Gorbachev finally opened the borders. He wakes up the next day - his wife is not there. He goes out into the corridor - not a soul in the Kremlin! Goes out on the street - no one is around! Everything's just empty... Suddenly the phone rings:
- Mikhail Sergeyevich, how are you? This is Ligachev.
- Yegor Kuzmich, my dear, what's happened?
- I told you, Mikhail Sergeyevich: you can't open the borders. Everyone has left. The whole Union is gone.
- Wow! So, it's just the two of us left?
- What do you mean, "two of us"? I'm calling from Sweden.During the meetings of the Second Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, a terrorist suddenly bursts into the room. With a bomb in his hands, he shouts:
- Where is Yeltsin? Where is Yeltsin?!
There's nothing to do, Yeltsin rises up:
- It's me.
- Boris Nikolayevich, my dear, duck down please so that you don't catch any shrapnel.
Anekdoty about the “New Russians”
With the fall of the USSR and the political chaos came the nineties. Tumulteous times, when people got a taste of freedom for the first time in their lives. Turns out, freedom is an acquired taste, and not everyone experiences it in the same way. A lot is written about this time, and a lot more will be.
A very unique type of people emerged then, called the “New Russians.” Brushing with exceptionally wide strokes (and depending on how you look at it), the “New Russians” were either industrious and opportunistic entrepreneurs who had to cross the near-non-existing lines of the law, or, simply put, bandits who pretended to be businessmen. They had a very specific image: typically, leather coats or garish jackets, typically not very bright or educated, exceptionally brazen and rude. The most successful of them had unimaginable riches and eventually turned into oligarchs, which was also reflected in anekdoty. I would say they were a mix between Sopranos-style mobsters and modern Silicon Valley bros.
A new Russian and his lawyer come out of the courthouse.
- Well, are you satisfied? - asks the lawyer.
- I cannot find words to express my gratitude. There is only one thing I regret.
- What's that?
- Your speech was so talented, so marvelous, it moved the judge so much that I could have stolen much more.A customs officer goes up to the ship for inspection.
- Any drugs?
The owner of the ship replies:
- Yes. Here you go. (pulls out a suitcase) Here is heroin, here is cocaine. Everything is neatly packed, here is a ready-made syringe.
The customs officer, his eyes darting:
- And maybe there are weapons?
The owner pulls out another suitcase:
- Here is a Makarov, here is a Kalashnikov, here are cartridges for them. Everything as it should be.
Customs officer with a chuckle:
- Probably, you have currency too?
The owner pulls out a third suitcase:
- Here's a million dollars, please.
Customs officer, not understanding anything:
- And this is all yours?
The owner:
- No, it's all yours. Mine is in the hold.Two classmates meet. One of the became a New Russian, and the second a simple Soviet engineer.
- Vasya, is that you? In a Mercedes-Benz 600, in a red jacket? You were always such a poor student. How did you make all this wealth?
- You see, Sanya. It's very simple, really. I go to Germany and buy a barrel of beer for 1000 dollars. I come home, I sell it for 2,000 dollars. And that 2 percent difference is mine!New Russian children playing in a sandpit in a Moscow courtyard. One of them breaks a trowel, he takes off his Motorola flip phone, opens it up and starts digging with it. The other child looks at him in bewilderment:
- You idiot, you'll break it!
- Ah, daddy will buy a new one tomorrow.
- And today you will walk around with a pager like a sucker?A Grand Cherokee Jeep is rushing through the streets, with a Mercedes 600 chasing after it... One traffic light, another one, a hard turn... The Grand Cherokee dives into alleys, the Mercedes keeps up. Finally, the Grand Cherokee goes into a back courtyard and the Merc smacks it in the back. Two New Russians come out of the wrecked cars. The one in the Mercedes takes out his mobile phone, dials a number and says: Hey, bros, Seryoga is it.Two New Russians meet in a car showroom. One buys a Mercedes 600, and the other asks him:
- Hey bro, you bought the same one just a week ago. Did you break something?
- No, the ashtray is full.A New Russian comes out of the Louvre, with the paintings wrapped in a tube under his arm and says to himself: "Well, I bought the postcards, now it's time to go shopping for souvenirs."A New Russian finds a lamp, rubs it, and sees a Genie. The New Russian signs and says:
- Ok, I will give you your three wishes.A son comes to his New Russian father.
- Dad, you always taught me to tell the truth, and now girls don't like me...
- What happened?
- I was out with a girl, she asked me: ‘Do you have a $200 red jacket? I told her: ‘No...’ ‘Do you have a Mercedes 600?’ ‘No...’ ‘And a two-storey summer house?’ ‘No, I don't either...’ And she broke up with me...
- Listen, son, I'll tell you something. You can ask our butler for a red jacket; sell your Chrysler and buy a fucking Mercedes; but if we're gonna have to take two floors off the dacha because of every skirt...A new Russian is going to have a holiday in Cyprus. First, his secretary arrives there and walks along the beach with the owner of a 5-star hotel.
- What is this?
- Pebbles.
- Pebbles is wrong, the boss doesn't like it. Remove the pebbles, sprinkle everything with white sand.
- But it's very expensive!
- We'll pay!
The next day everything is sprinkled with sand.
- What's this?
- It's the sea!
- What sea? A dirty puddle! The sea should be cleaned, pebbles removed, the wave should roll every 30 seconds at 55 centimetres.
- But you understand, it's underwater engineering works, it's very expensive!
- We'll pay!
In two weeks, everything is as it should be.
- What's this?
- It's seagulls.
- No seagulls. Take them all out! No, leave two, let them walk on the beach and never take off.
- But it's such an environmental damage! And trained seagulls are so rare.
- We'll pay!
Finally, the boss arrives. He walks along the clean white sand to the beach, looked at the two seagulls, who stroll dutifully along the edge of the beach, sits down in a chaise lounge, breathes a full chest of fresh sea air and says: - My God! How can money buy such beauty?!At the end of the film “Zhmurki,” which is a Tarantino-esque comedy about two New Russians, Sergey and Simon (see screenshot above), there is a flash forward to 2005. In it, both Sergey and Simon are senators in the State Duma. While not literally prophetic, that was exceptionally shrewd for the time.
It’s fairly easy to confuse oligarchy with meritocracy. Maybe these jokes would be a reminder that most oligarchs used to be New Russians, or their analogues.
Anekdoty about the nineties
And finally, a collection of anekdoty from the nineties, without any special topic or any specific characters.
A bus carrying parliamentarians crashes into a tree at full speed. A farmer who happened to see all this digs a large hole and buries everyone. Some time later, the authorities arrive on the scene. They ask the man - where are the people? He replies:
- I buried them all.
- So they're all dead?
- No, some of them said they were alive. But you can't trust politicians...A conversation between two Duma senators:
- It's hard for an honest man to make a liviving nowadays.
- Yeah, but what's it to you?- What has our press become like after glasnost?
- It has become like a miniskirt: it shows everything, but hides the most important!At home at dinner, the wife asks a businessman:
- I hear you have a new secretary?
- Yes, a new one.
- How is she?
- You know... Ordinary.
- Is she pretty?
- She is okay, I guess.
- And how does she dress?
- Very fast!A son asks a businessman:
- Daddy, what is a subsidiary?
- Son, do you remember your potty?
- Yes, Dad.
- Well, your potty is a subsidiary of our toilet bowl.The director of a large factory says to his deputy:
- Congratulations, you are making incredible progress. Just a year ago you joined us as a simple labourer, two months later you became a foreman, three months later a master, then an engineer, a month later you were already a deputy workshop manager, two months later you reached the workshop manager position, and now you are my first deputy. What do you say to that?
- Thank you, Dad!There is a boxing match with Mike Tyson. He is supposed to fight the strongest Russian boxer, but at the last moment it turns out that he is afraid and will not enter the ring. What to do? The public is waiting, they need an opponent. The organizers look from a window, and a local butcher is standing near the market. They tell him:
- If you stand for one round against Mike Tyson, you'll get 500,000 dollars.
He agrees. The fight starts. Tyson hits him with a right, uppercut, etc. The man stands for the whole round. Everybody's shocked. The organizers say to him:
- Stand for another round - you'll get a million.
He stands, as if nothing is happening. Everyone is horrified. They offer again:
- Stand one more round - 3 million.
The butcher:
- No, I can't take it anymore, now I'm going to fuck him up!And my favorite joke from that time—an absurdist one, for sure. It is not explicitly about the nineties, but I think it captures the spirit.
A guy is walking through the desert. He can't walk anymore, he is thirsty. Suddenly, he sees an apple tree ripe with apples, and he runs to pick one. All of a sudden, the ground beneath him bursts, everything rumbles, falls, and a huge arse comes out of the ground, swallows up the apple, and hides back under the ground. The man, speechless, asks:
- What... what the fuck was that?!
Again, everything rumbles and shakes, and the huge arse comes out of the ground and says:
- Granny Smith!Thank you for reading up to here! As usual, share your own anekdoty in the comments. If this post gets a lot of interest, I will also read a few anekdoty in the next one. Some of them must be read aloud; sometimes the humor is in the delivery.
You can read my previous post about anekdoty here:
Best,
Ꙝ
I don't get the granny Smith one.
Some of these are brilliant and harken back to some of the jokes I’ve heard from post-Soviet immigrant friends in Sydney.