The art of a Russian joke: anekdoty that got people arrested

There are no problems with freedom of speech—only problems with freedom after the speech.

Hello,

The first post of this month featured silliness and infantile humor; the second one featured heartbreak and horror. This time, we will combine the two. This is a collection of anekdoty like no other: for every little joke, there will be a name of a person who got arrested for it and the sentence that they got.

How did it happen? In the most banal and the most disgusting way. People told each other jokes in the company of friends, someone they trusted. Then, some of these friends went to the police and reported everyone else. Why did they do it? This is a separate discussion, which we’ll have one day. But these cases were very common¹. Sergey Dovlatov famously said, “We curse comrade Stalin to no end, and for a good reason, of course. And yet I want to ask, who wrote four million reports?”

a famous Soviet poster with a caption, “Don’t blab!”

---

Stalin has caught a pubic louse and doesn’t know what to do. He asks Voroshilov, and Voroshilov asks Kalinin. Finally, Kalinin gives some advice: “Write 'Kolkhoz' on Stalin’s dick, the lice will all run away.”

Mikhail Khrustalev got 3 years of hard labor for telling this joke in 1939.

a page from Khrustalev’s report

---

A kolkhoz worker rides a horse along the Moskva River and sees someone drowning. He saves the man, and it turns out it was comrade Stalin. Stalin says:
— Thank you so much for saving me! Ask me for anything, I will grant your every wish.
The kolkhoz worker scratches his head:
— Please don’t tell anyone I saved you.

For this anekdot, Alexei Kondratiev was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in 1937.

---

One year, Passover was celebrated on May 1st, so God rode on his donkey to Stalin to decide which occasion to celebrate. Stalin was very pleased and sent Voroshilov to bring some wine. God said:
— Thank you, but I cannot, my donkey is staying over there, he’s very hungry.
Stalin said:
— You are such an odd guy to worry about a single donkey. Look, I have 170 million donkeys, and I can’t be arsed.

In 1937, Ivan Voronin-Portnoy was sentenced to 8 years of hard labor for this joke.

A page from Voronin-Portnoy’s report

---

A showbill: 

- The Lenin Theater presents: "Woe from Wit."

- The Stalin Theater presents: "Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man" and "Stay in Your Own Sled."

- The Joint State Political Directorate (“OGPU“) Theater presents: "The Pearl Fishers."

- The Proletariat Theater presents: "Poverty is No Vice."

From the case of Alexander Babiy, who was sentenced to 5 years of hard labor in 1933.

a page from the Babiy’s report

---

There are several ways to catch a lion, but the KGB invented the most original one: you catch a poodle and beat it until it signs a paper that it’s actually a lion.

Gennadiy Abramov was sent to 5 years of hard labor for this joke in 1946. He was 18 years old at the time.

a page from Abramov’s protocol

---

A case file of Sergei Popovich and Pinya Gelfman has six anekdoty, that Popovich told to Gelfman, and the latter told his colleagues, all of whom are listed as "witnesses.” Both Popovich and Gelfman were sentenced to ten years in 1948.

An old woman saw a camel for the first time in her life and started crying.
— Grandma, why are you crying? 
— Look what the Soviet State has done to this poor horse.

After lunch at the Yalta conference, the Americans and the British say to Russians: 
— Thank you for the tea.
— Why only for the tea?
— Because the rest of the products are ours!

An American and a Soviet engineer die at the same time. When the American engineer was autopsied, plans and blueprints were found in his head and pork stew was found in his stomach. The Soviet engineer's autopsy revealed pork stew in his head and plans and blueprints in his stomach.

In America and Britain, a woman is happy if she has beautiful outfits. In the Soviet Union, a woman is happy if she gets one kilogram of sprats without waiting in line, and the fishmonger forgets to tear off the coupon from her card.

Molotov and Stalin are flying in an airplane over Moscow, they see a queue for flour at a store.
— Comrade Stalin, if I threw a sack of flour out of the airplane now, these people would kiss me on the lips, — Molotov says.
Flying on, another store has a queue for sugar.
— Eh, if I now threw a sack of sugar out of the airplane on these people, they would kiss my hands, — says Stalin.
"If I threw both of you out of the airplane, the whole country would kiss me anywhere I want,” thinks the pilot.

A man dies and goes to the next world. First, he is shown to a clean and well-lit room. There is plenty of food there, and angels fly around. But then, he is flunked out of it, is thrown into a tiny and dark room, and put into a pot to boil. He asks, what was the first room, the clean one? His potmate answers, “Ah, just a propaganda center.”

a page from Popovich and Gelfman’s report

---

Stalin had a wife who was called the Soviet State and a daughter who was called the Five-Year Plan. One night the daughter soiled herself, and Stalin was screaming, “Soviet State, wake up, the Five-Year Plan has shit herself!”

In 1945, Petr Alyoshin told this joke to his colleagues (he was a school principal). He was convicted to seven years of hard labor.

---

Some were barely even jokes. This one is not an anekdot, just an observation:

One day in 1937, Semyonov and his colleague Mikhailov were walking along, and Semyonov said to his companion:

“Look, the pigeons shit on the Stalin monument...”

On the same day, Mikhailov wrote a report on Semyonov, describing all the details of the words expressed by a colleague in relation to the “leader of all peoples.” The sentence of the court was: Semyonov was sent to hard labor for 7 years for counter-revolutionary agitation.

---

A Moscow student was brought up under the Soviet regime and wanted to have a good, intelligent child, so she wrote a statement to comrade Stalin with a request that she wanted to have a child with him. Comrade Stalin read this statement inattentively and put a resolution on this statement: Pass it along to comrade Molotov for execution. Comrade Molotov also read this statement inattentively and put a resolution: Pass it along to my secretary for execution.

This joke—if one could even call it that—was told by Vasili Tyschenko to his colleague and his personal driver in 1935. He was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor. I took it directly from the protocol (see below), and it might have lost some humor in bureaucracy. That didn’t help, of course.

the Tyschenko protocol

---

In October 1935, Nikolai Punin, together with Lev Gumilev (the son of Anna Akhmatova), was arrested for “creating a counter-revolutionary terrorist group.” He received such a loud accusation for a drunken joke during a feast with Gumilev's university comrades. Punin decided to demonstrate to the guests a recently acquired automatic timer for the camera, which was wound up by a mechanical spring, surely a novelty of technical progress back then. Starting the machine, Punin walked in circles, mimicking the spring, and said, “Our friend Joseph is walking around, walking around. Then—a click!” And in the rhythm of the shutter, he ran his hand across his throat, saying, “Our friend Joseph has gone too far.” The joke did not arouse much laughter but was remembered by one of the guests and reported to the relevant authorities. Only thanks to Anna Akhmatova, who addressed Stalin by letter, the case was dropped, and Punin and Gumilev were released.

---

Sergey Dovlatov told this story:

“A crew member on a ship goes to the ship's doctor and complains of pains everywhere. As the doctor examines him, he says: “Well, you have a fat belly and skinny legs… In general, you have a weak constitution, my dear fellow.” The doctor was arrested the next day because there is only one Constitution, and it cannot be weak.

By the way, article 125 of the same Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of gatherings and demonstrations.

---

When I was searching for these anekdoty, I had to visit a few Russian-language forums, where they were discussed. As usual, half the visitors don’t believe a single word of these (anyone can write on a piece of paper or forge a protocol, etc.). But there also were relatives of the people who were arrested during the Soviet times, and they told the stories of their families. One such story I found especially notable:

My paternal grandfather was convicted for an anekdot because of a report. He got two years. The guy who wrote his report then joined him too in the camp. Interestingly, the granddaughter of the informer was my friend and classmate.
My father was actually the one who suffered the most from this sentence. He dreamed of being a pilot. He entered a flying school and passed everything with honors, but at that time there was still a so-called credentials committee and he was not allowed to pass.

To understand modern Russia, you need to understand its past: the type of society where anyone—a colleague, a neighbor, a family member—can write a report on you, and you’ll be arrested the next day, even though all you did was tell a joke. A society where a significant part of the people sat in the camps, part of the people guarded them, and the third part sent them there. This reality is gone (at least, it was gone for a while), but this mindset is still alive and kicking.

Another thing that struck me is that most of these are not funny at all. Some of it may be due to the dated humor, but I think the main reason is different. You see, these are Soviet variations of shock humor, of outrageous, sacrilegious jokes. They were not witty (ok, except for the showbill one), they were funny because they brought the Soviet gods down, just a little bit.

I will leave you with one last thing. All these people I mention above, and thousands, millions of others—they knew the risks, right? They knew that telling these anekdoty, even to the closest of friends, can be dangerous. And yet, people continued to tell each other jokes. Because humor, especially in times of hardship, is a basic human need.

Happy April Fools’ Day, everyone.

---

This essay on the nature of humor was published for the Soaring Twenties Social Club Symposium. This cycle, the theme was “Spring Cleaning”.

Best,

Ꙝ

1. There is even a special anekdot about it, which is not counted in today’s collection:

The prisoners in the labor camp are discussing what they were convicted for. One of them keeps silent, so they begin to prod him. Finally he says: “For my laziness!”
- What do you mean?
- We were telling jokes, my buddy and I, late at night, drinking... It was raining outside, so I thought, I'll go to the KGB in the morning. He wasn't so lazy.