Anecdotes For Which They Planted In The Soviet Union: A Selection

2024 Author: Bailey Albertson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 12:53

Dangerous humor: jokes for which they were imprisoned in the Soviet Union

Joseph Stalin is known for his subtle sense of humor. He knew how to respond wittily and aptly to fellow party members and other interlocutors. But the way ordinary citizens of the Soviet Union joked were watched closely and tirelessly.

Humor in the USSR

In the Soviet Union, several magazines of humor and satire were published: "Red Pepper", "Smehach", "Begemot" and, perhaps, the most famous - "Crocodile". On television, viewers could see the newsreel "Fitil", and for a long time the duet of Shtepsel and Tarapunka, as well as Arkady Raikin, performed on the stage. But all the materials that got to the “people” in this way were subjected to strict censorship, however, the same was the case with books and films. Therefore, the official humor in the Land of the Soviets was strictly refined.

Convicted for anecdotes

Political anecdotes could only be told in their own kitchen, in whispers and to those closest to them, since having voiced such humor in an unfamiliar company, one could expect that with a 90 percent probability it would be retold by a "well-wisher" in the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR). For those who like to express dissatisfaction with the government, the party, or just tell jokes, there was a special 58th article, the 10th point of which was called "Anti-Soviet agitation."

7 years for a joke about Stalin

Pyotr Kirillovich Alyoshin, who at that time was the director of the school, and also taught at it, received seven years in camps for an anecdote about the leader of the peoples, Comrade Stalin. Here is the anecdote itself:

In 1945, the principal told this to his colleagues at school, one woman was vigilant and reported on the narrator.

Term for a party member

At the beginning of the autumn of 1935, a denunciation was received by the NKVD administration against Comrade Vasily Ivanovich Tyschenko, a party member authorized in the committee for the procurement of agricultural products. During a break at the plenum of the district committee of the CPSU (b) (All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), he told in a personal conversation an anecdote about Stalin as follows:

Despite public repentance and recognition of his mistake before the members of the plenum, he was nevertheless reported to the Chekists and in September 1935 Tyshchenko was arrested. He was later sentenced to 10 years in forced labor camps.

Fragment of the case of V. I. Tyschenko

10 years for the camel joke

At the beginning of 1948, a trial took place over two friends, Popovich Sergei Ivanovich and Gelfman Pinya Moiseevich. They were sentenced to 10 years in forced labor camps under the same article 58.10 for anecdotes about Soviet power.

Fragment from the case of S. I. Popovich and Gelfman P. M

The fact was that in the summer of 1947, citizen Popovich told his friend Gelfman 6 anecdotes. The latter retold them to his fellow railroad workers. Further, the same 6 anecdotes are quoted:

For such jokes in the Soviet Union, people received far from joke terms.

And there were a lot of such cases when colleagues, neighbors and even relatives could report to the NKVD officers for an imprudent statement or a joke about politicians. In the book by E. Ginzburg "Steep Route" there is also a mention of a woman who told 2 anecdotes at the dinner table in a narrow circle of relatives. Later she ended up in prison on charges of anti-Soviet agitation. Those convicted of jokes were rehabilitated in the 60s of the last century. Many, unfortunately, are already posthumous.