Humour of the Soviet Era. Part One.

Out of the bleakest moments east of the Iron Curtain was born an improbable, subversive humour, feeding a stream of popular jokes despite censure, repression and poverty.

Dreams of abundance in the West were at the heart of the absurd vignettes, known as "anekdoti" in Russia, which remain part of popular culture in the former Eastern Bloc states.

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Twenty years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, they are one aspect of life under Communism that still unites people from Berlin to Moscow, often refurbished to poke fun at today's regimes.

Many of the Soviet-era jokes darkly played on people's dreams of fleeing the Communist bloc: "Why did the USSR decide not to send men to the moon? They were afraid they would demand political asylum."

Another goes: "The leader of East Germany Erich Honecker orders a minister to tear down the Berlin Wall. Stupefied, the minister asks why? 'I want to be alone,' Honecker replies."

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This gallows humour rejoiced in jeering at the sacrosanct Communist Party, which by the 1980s was widely reputed to be headed by senile and corrupt officials.

"What has 70 teeth and four legs? A crocodile. What has four teeth and 70 legs? The Central Committee of the Communist Party."

But disguising such critiques with puns and allusions was more than a matter of wit under a totalitarian regime where any hint of insubordination could end you in prison.

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In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), such anecdotes, or "Witze", were dubbed "3-7 Witze". The preface stood for the three-year jail sentence handed one caught listening to a subversive joke and the seven-year sentence given someone telling it.

But fear did not stem the flow of cynical humour: "This year they again held the Festival of Soviet political jokes. First prize: 10 years of winter vacation in Siberia."

Part Two >>>

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