70 Comments

These are genuinely good jokes

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True.

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#3 reminds me of a joke I read (in the West) : during the Six Day War, Egyptian officers are panicking, Israeli forces have broken through their frontlines and are pushing hard into Egyptian territory. So they go and consult their Soviet advisers. Soviet advisers say, just do like us in WW2, pull back and wait for winter.

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That's a good one.

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Super interesting!

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Thanks!

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Please continue your translation of these jokes and also those from the Soviet era.

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I will! I have at least one Soviet political and one apolitical collection ready.

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These are terrific! My husband lived in Leningrad and Moscow from 1986 to 1988 and brought back some great anecdaty from that era. Here’s a typical one:

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?”

The man shakes his head and says, “It’s worse than that. They’ve run out of bullets.”

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Thank you! It's a really good one too. Do you mind if I include it in the next post like this (featuring, probably, perestroika-era jokes)?

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Please do! Looking forward to the post!

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This is bitter-funny. A lot of bitter, some funny.

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This is true, and I believe, reflects life in Russia quite well.

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These are great, looking forward to your next posts!

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Thanks!

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Um, I didn't find the jokes very funny, sorry. Different culture I guess. But I know a Soviet joke which I like:

A man goes into a fish shop by mistake. He asks for some cuts of meat. The shop assistant says to him:

"This is a fish shop. Here we have no fish. Next door, that's the meat shop. That's where they have no meat."

A typical cynical Soviet joke. 😄

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Thanks, that's a classic!

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My father in law tells me Russian/Soviet jokes occasionally. Unfortunately, a lot them don’t do much for me (an American). However, some are fairly universal, and although the delivery in English doesn’t always work, you can still understand the humor.

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By the way, there is a translation problem in one of the jokes. It's hard for a non-native speaker to see it. It's this line:

*Since then he was beaten, spat at, thrown bottles at.*

You use the passive voice for the first two actions (beat, spat). This is fine. But it doesn't work for the bottle. You have to write it like this:

**Since then he was beaten, spat at, and bottles were thrown at him.*

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Yeah, I guess you're right. I wrote it the way you suggested initially, but it didn't work with the flow.

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Sure, the flow is better the first way. But it's too grammatically wrong to stay as it is, unfortunately.

Even better is:

* Since then he has been beaten, spat at and had bottles thrown at him. *

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Yes, this is the best version.

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I've been to Russia, and I remember Russians making jokes about the Chukchi people. There was some elaborate joke I was told about a Chukchi person and a pot, but I can't remember it exactly now.

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Yes, these are quite common. I am not sure I will get to these, because frankly some of them are quite appallingly racist, especially in the context of the history of the Chukchi.

I did prepare this one, though, which is maybe less funny but more dignified:

"The ethnographer sits opposite the shaman and thinks: ‘Poor, ignorant savage! Does he really think that in the world of spirits there really exists the same river Yenisei, the same taiga, and the same reindeer? What a primitive religion!’

The shaman sits opposite to the ethnographer and thinks: ‘How can I explain to this kind but ignorant savage that sacral topos differs from profane topos substantially but not existentially? Oh! Maybe I'll tell him that in the world of spirits there is the same river Yenisei, the same taiga and the same reindeer— perhaps at least he will understand a part of that."

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Yes, the Chukchi jokes aren’t exactly politically correct, but I never found that to be a problem in Russia. Russians don’t care about that, in my experience.

It raises the question of how much tolerance we should give to humour. Personally, I don’t have a problem with subversive or non-pc jokes. That’s part of their appeal. When sanctimonious people start policing jokes, it’s bad.

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I generally agree; it's just that these jokes aren't for my taste. I see elegance in punching up, not down.

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Here is one that punches up:

A Chukcha is fishing in a boat. Suddenly a US submarine emerges from the waters. The hatch opens and a US sailor asks him if he’s seen any Russian submarines recently. “They are generally clustered in the north-by-northwest direction about a hundred naughts from here,” says the Chukcha. The American thanks him and departs.

An hour later a Russian submarine emerges. The Russian sailor asks if he’s seen the US submarine. “Yes, it was here an hour ago and then headed north-by-northwest,” says the Chukcha.

The baffled Russian seaman replies, “Please quit speaking in riddles and just point to where it went!”

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Yes, I remember this one :)

The main portion of the humor comes from the stereotype subversion, so it loses a bit in translation, though.

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Good on you 😅 I find jokes challenging to translate. Whenever I try translating jokes from German or Turkish into English, I miserably fail. It’s truly tough.

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Yeah, it's not easy, a joke is mostly about the flow and the surprise than anything else.

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There’s a typo in the image description (Gulag not Gugag). I tried to translate jokes form Russian into English before and a lot of the time they don’t translate well which is a shame - this is solid effort though.

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Thanks, I'll fix that.

This is harder than it seems before you try—I was very cavalier about it when I planned the post, but when I started actually translating, I had to throw some jokes out, just because I couldn't do it properly.

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I consider the following to be the quintessential Russian joke (although my Russian wife disagrees). What do you think:

Q: Two trains departed simultaneously from points A and B, headed headlong towards each other over the same set of tracks. They were estimated to collide in 38 minutes, but never did. Why not?

A: It was just not to be.

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This is a very interesting example! For me, personally, it is much more a joke about Russians than a Russian joke, if you know what I mean.

It is funny, though :)

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Angela Merkel has 2 favorite Russian/CCCP jokes. The first went: Sovie Media makes a documentary about how life improved. In a village in (Yakutia or take your pick) an old granny tells them: "Oh, before the glorious revolution, life was hard: we had nothing, no electricity, no running water, no heating." - "Yes, terrible; and now?" - "Now we still have no electricity, no water, no heating. But ... blagodarnost (gratefulness)."

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A classic, for sure.

But now you need to throw the second shoe :)

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She must have learned them 40-50 years ago, when traveling the CCCP as a young GDR-student. So, classics. The other was more appealing to German physic-students (she got a PhD): When the BAM (or the transib) got built, there was discussion: build just one track or two tracks. "Well, we start building from both ends, if the rails do not meet, it will be two-tracks." (Sorry, re-re-re-translating from memory from an interview she gave SPIEGEL in German).

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I head a version of this one as a Soviet bid to build the tunnel under the English Channel: we'll start to dig from both ends; worst case scenario, you'll have two tunnels.

Funny thing is, this is actually how they did dig the tunnel in the end.

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These jokes had me in tears...there's something about the dry cynicism compelling to me. I enjoyed the novels about Russian investigator Arkady Renko, mostly for the sardonic sense of humor. Are you having any luck getting your books published?

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Thanks!

Not yet, but not for the lack of trying. Know any literary agents? :)

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Unfortunately, no. But I’ll be glad to lend my world-famous name if you need an endorsement.

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So, you're offering a Benediction?

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Of course. Or eggs Benedict

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