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Soviet Russia Jokes
I was participating in a thread by@willowspring about Professional Jokes and @kedavis mentioned wanting more “In Russia” jokes. So, why not a thread of great Soviet/Russian jokes? Like this one:
Stalin is dead and things have begun to lighten up a bit relatively speaking. An old couple live in an apartment in Moscow and she sends him down to buy some meat for supper. After queueing for the obligatory three hours he gets to the counter and the woman says ‘No more meat, meat finished’. He cracks and starts raving ‘I fought in the Revolution, I fought for Lenin in the First World War and for Stalin in the Second World War and we are still in this [REDACTED]?’ One of the leather-jacketed brigade takes him on one side and says ‘Look old man you know you can’t talk like this. Just think, a few years ago you would have been shot for saying these things.’ The old man trudges home. His wife seeing him empty-handed says ‘Run out of meat again have they?’ He says: ‘It’s worse than that, they’ve run out of bullets.’
Or, this one, which is different:
A young couple are in Red Square in Moscow the night before their wedding. The sky is dark and gloomy and the young bride is worried that their wedding day might be ruined if it rains instead of snowing. She turns to her husband and says,
“Dearest Ivan Alexseivich, I am worried that it may rain and melt all of the snow which would ruin our wedding since we are arriving by troika”.
Ivan turned to her and said, my dearest Katya Ivanova this would truly be a tragedy, but do not fear. I will ask my good friend Rudoph Petrovich if it will rain tomorrow.”
“Isn’t Rudoph Pretovich your childhood friend?” she asked
“Yes, we were in Young Pioneers, and them Komsumol together and we both joined the Party together. He got a job here in Moscow where he is a manager at a tractor factory. He is a true communist!” Ivan told her
“But why would you ask him about if it would rain? Is he a meterologist?” Katya asked
“No, he is a factory manager like I said, he studied engineering in university” Ivan replied
“So, why would you ask him about the weather for our wedding?”
“Because, my dear, Rudolph the Red knows rain dear.
What are some good ones that you have heard?
Published in Humor
Don’t be so hard on yourself.
Your first one was good.
During the height of the space race (dates the joke), Russia is making extraordinary progress at putting a man on the moon. The propoganda office in Moscow gets the great idea that, once the cosmonauts reach the moon, they will paint it red to remind the world of the great victory of the worker´s revolution over capitalism. The head of the CIA reports this to the President, who seems unconcerned. “NASA´s already got a contingency plan,” the President says almost impassively. Launch day comes and the lunar landers lift off just hours apart. The Soviet lander is faster and reaches the moon one day before the Americans and, true to the plan, the cosmonauts paint the moon red. “Mr. President! This is a disaster!” shouts the CIA head as the TV screens show the image of the red moon. “Wait one day. Our boys should get there by then.” The next night, the President invites the CIA director into his office where they see the image of the red moon…painted with a Coca Cola logo.
Note: That joke was told me by a man who spent time in jail in Bulgaria for telling jokes in an “anti-communist spirit”. His favorite U.S. President of course was Reagan.
Actually, I meant the “In Soviet Russia, television watches YOU!” type. But these are good!
I do love that plumber joke. I hadn’t heard the curfew one. That one was great.
Couple years back I got my brother @SamRhody a book of Soviet humor for his birthday. It was more of someone’s reworked Ph.D thesis than a proper joke book like I had hoped. Even so, I should remember a lot of these.
There are a ton of Armenian Radio jokes like
or
Two men are standing on the corner waiting for the light to change. A Mercedes and a Soviet-built Zaporozhets pull up to the light. One man says to the stranger next to him, “So which do you think is a better car?” The other replies, “The Zapo, of course”. Behind those cars, two others pull up, waiting, a Jaguar and a Lada. “Well, how about between these two?” “The Lada is finer by far.”
“Say, you really don’t know cars, do you?”
“No, comrade. I don’t know you.”
Some Russian attitudes predate and post-date the Soviet era.
A bureaucrat and his wife are at the ballet. She knows her husband has been having an affair with one of the dancers and demands to know which one it is. “Is it her?”, she says, pointing accusingly. “No, that’s Kropotkin’s mistress. She swivels to another dancer. “Is she the one?” “No, she belongs to Chubelsky”. “All right, then, which one is it?” He reluctantly points to the woman.
“Good”, she says with satisfaction, “Ours is better”.
“Why does the new Russian Arctic Fleet have only glass bottom boats?”
“So they can see the old Russian Arctic Fleet.”
A man is at the doctor’s office. “I need a referral to an Eye and Ear doctor.”
“Don’t you mean an Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat doctor?”
“No, just Eye and Ear. I keep seeing one thing, but hearing another.”
Not a Soviet joke, exactly…but a practical joke ON Soviets if it really happened.
Standard story about how the MIG-15 fighter got its engine is that Mikoyan suggested visiting Rolls-Royce & licensing their Nene jet engine. Stalin scorred..’what fool will sell us his secrets?’..but told Mikoyan he could try.
The fool turned out to be Stafford Cripps, the Labor minister of trade, who agreed to license the engine if promised it would not be used for military purposes (which is all it was good for, given its high fuel consumption, but whatever…)
There’s another version, related by Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, who says he got it from Mikoyan.
In this version, Mikoyan was hanging around the RR plant, waiting for final approval, and finally got irritated. He told the RR exec: “You always tell us how bad it is that we can’t do anything without approval of the government, but I can’t see you’re any better…you’re still waiting for approval from the Minister.’
RR guy then asks, ‘Do you by any chance play billiards?”
Mik: “A long time ago, not great at it”
RR guy: “We have a table right here in the plant. I’ll play you..one game. You win, you get the engine…if not, not”
A boy tells his teacher one week “My cat had kittens and they are all communists.”
The next week, the same boy tells his teacher “My kittens are all capitalists now.”
The teacher asks him “What happened?”
The boy answers. “They opened their eyes.”
So Mikoyan is pretty nervous, high stakes, and it’s been a long time since he’s played. But nevertheless, he agrees. Wins, and the Soviet Union gets the Nene engine.
I have no idea whether or not this version is true…don’t know if Mik himself had a reputation as a joker or not.
However it happened, consequences were pretty dismal for the West…the Soviets made some improvements to the Nene, put it in volume production, and the MIG-15 with this engine was a very unpleasant surprise for our side in Korea.
Two dogs meet on the road. The Romanian dog says, “I’m on my way to Poland to eat”. The east German dog says, “I’m going to Hungary to bark”.
Cripps was pretty much a Communist, by the way. Definitely a Marxist.
A west German and an east German are topping each other’s boasts.
The west German says, “Our allies, the Americans, put a worker on the Moon”.
The east German says, “That’s nothing. Our allies, the Cubans, put five million workers in the sun.”
Sorry to be stupid, but I really don’t understand this one.
Soviet type status-seeking. She didn’t mind him having a mistress as long as his mistress was “better than” the other guys’ mistresses.
A caller asks Armenian Radio “Is there life on Mars”? “Don’t worry” replies Armenian Radio “When we bring communism to Mars there won’t be.”
Armenian Radio gets asked “Are there any Jews left in Ukraine?” Armenian Radio replies “We are proud to announce 110% of all Ukrainian Jews have emigrated.”
Q:Radio Armenia caller asks what is the difference between a communist & a capitalist?
A: a communist has read the works of Marx, a capitalist understands the works of Marx.
after the ‘68 invasion of Czechslovakia a man goes to the Czech police station to report “2 Swiss soldiers stole my Russian watch”. The officer says “ don’t you mean 2 Russian soldiers stole your Swiss watch?”. He replied “ you said it, I didn’t”.
A commissar goes out to the collective farm and asks a worker-“how is the potato harvest?” .
The worker replies “ Oh, comrade commissar the harvest is so great, if we piled the potatoes in one pile, they would reach the foot of God!”.
The commissar angerly retorts “ comrade in the Soviet Union there is NO God!”.
The peasant replied “ that’s OK, there aren’t any potatoes either.”
Q: what is capitalism?
A: man’s exploitation by man
Q: what is communism?
A: the opposite of capitalism.
A Soviet-era joke told by the Russian comic Yakov Smirnoff:
“In Russia we have two television stations: One is all propaganda. The other is a KGB agent screaming ‘Turn it back to channel one!!!’”
One of his best was about hot dogs-“In Russia, we don’t eat that part of the dog!”
or
“In America you go out looking for a party- inRussia the party looks for you”
“In America, you watch TV, in Russia the TV watches you”. (also inserted radio and listen instead)
A Polish tourist returned from a trip to the USSR saddled with two very large, very heavy suitcases. On his wrist was a new Soviet-made watch. The Customs Officer asked if he had purchased any goods abroad.
“I bought this brand-new, state-of-the-art Soviet wristwatch. There’s nothing like it in the capitalist world. Look, it shows the time, the date, your heart rate, the phase of the Moon –even the weather!”
“That’s amazing,” the Customs Officer said, “but what’s in those huge suitcases?”
“The batteries.”
***
A woman walked down a Moscow sidewalk carrying a bag full of toilet paper rolls.
A passerby was impressed and said, “Excuse me, comrade, where did you buy all that toilet paper?”
“Buy? Are you nuts? These are five years old. I’m bringing them back from the cleaners.”
***
Two American brothers, John and Bob, were members of the US communist party, and decided to emigrate to the USSR. They didn’t believe the media’s negative reporting about the Soviet Union, but wanted to make sure.
John would go first, and if the living conditions were good, he would write a letter to Bob using black ink. But if the USSR was as awful as the American media claimed, John would write a letter praising Russia, but in red ink.
Three months after arriving, John sent his letter to Bob. It was in black ink and read, “Dear brother Bob! I’m so happy here! It’s a beautiful country, I enjoy complete freedom, and have a high standard of living. Everything the capitalist press said were lies. Everything is readily available! The only shortage I’ve found is the lack of red ink.”
A Englishman, a Frenchman and a Russian are looking at a picture of Adam and Eve. The Englishman says “look at how calm they are. They are obviously English.” The Frenchman says “no, they are naked. They are obviously French!” The Russian says “No, they are obviously Russian. They have no cloths, only an apple to eat and are told that they live in paradise.”
When people ask me to list my top five novels, it’s tough, but not when asked for just my single favorite:
EDIT: This is not an affiliate link. Not mine anyway. I even shortened the link, but this thing is cray-cray
I have adored this book for years. I have re-read it many times, and recommend it to everybody. THIS THREAD should be filled with two kinds of people — those who love this book, and those who soon will.
A joke relayed as such in the book, in conversation, goes something like this:
Two Russians are speaking:
In Russia, dark humor is like food.
In another touching passage, one of (our hero) Renko’s friends tells him of finally being able to afford an electro-mechanical clothes washing machine which broke down after a few loads. The man is unable to find parts for a machine that “never breaks” of course, and expects his wife to be furious. Instead, she is content to go on washing clothes by hand, so long as she can show the fancy machine to company.
And then there’s the television — a Proton!
I won’t spoil it, but for me the funniest joke in the book is a single word reply.
Gorky Park is a “detective novel” that reads like fine literature. I don’t dig detective stories, but I adore Gorky Park.
And no, the movie is nowhere near the book. If you’ve seen the movie, ignore it. The movie is awful.
A note about the movie: like Clint Eastwood’s Firefox, IIRC, and a number of other films, Helsinki stands in for Moscow. The architecture and streets look similar, and there’s always a fleet of Russian-built cars to rent for filming.
An irony: the Soviets did the same thing, filming movies set in Western Europe in Finland. It was cheaper and much less of a risk of members of the film crew defecting.
It’s the day after the Warsaw Pact has been signed. Two Poles are walking down the street. “Comrade, are the Russians our friends or our brothers?” “Why comrade! The Russians are our brothers!” The second looks around, then whispers, “You get to choose your friends.”
A genie appeared to a Russian farmer and told him that he would grant any wish the farmer had, the catch was that whatever the wish was, the farmer’s neighbor would get that times two. The farmer replied, “I want half of my cows to die.”
Another variation is that the wish-seeker asked to be blinded in one eye.