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Time to Dust Off All Our Old Soviet Jokes
To kick off the morning — and given the Déjà vu we are having with the Russians these days — let’s have a Russian joke contest. I will kick it off with this offering (stolen entirely from my son’s Facebook page, I confess)
Here’s a good old Communist joke:
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: Because we hadn’t built a wall across it yet. The next one that tries to defect won’t find it quite so easy.
Why do KGB teams operate in groups of three? One can read, one can write, and one can keep an eye on the intellectuals.
Q: How many Ukrainians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None. People who glow in the dark don’t need lightbulbs.
Why do ex-Stasi officers make the best Berlin taxi drivers? Because you only need to tell them your name and they’ll already know where you live!
What is the difference between a Russian and a Soviet fairy tale?
A Russian fairy tale begins “High in the Ural Mountains…”
A Soviet fairy tale begins “Pravda today reported…”
What’s a Soviet string quartet? The Moscow Orchestra returned from a US tour.
Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Trotsky
Trotsky who?
That, comrade, is the right answer
Three workers find themselves locked up, and they ask each other what they’re in for. The first man says: “I was always ten minutes late to work, so I was accused of sabotage.” The second man says: “I was always ten minutes early to work, so I was accused of espionage.” The third man says: “I always got to work on time, so I was accused of having a Western watch.”
Q: Is it true Comrade Mikulin got 20 years in Siberia from libel on calling Leonid Brezhnev an idiot?
A: No. The sentence from libel was six months. The 19 years, 6 months were for leaking out a national secret.
A man came home and found his wife in bed with a stranger. Furious, the man shouted, “You good-for nothing, look at what you’re spending your time for, while at the corner store they’re selling eggs, and they have only three boxes left!”
Gorbachev received a letter from the Byelorussian Republic requesting approval for a new Navy. He was quite puzzled, as the Republic was landlocked and didn’t even have a decent lake, and queried the request.
The reply soon came “Uzbekistan has a Ministry of Culture, so why can’t we have a Navy?”
Q: How does every Russian joke start?
A: By looking over your shoulder.
A mummy was found in Egypt. The archaeologists could not determine its origin. Then a Soviet advisor offered his help. The mummy was delivered to the Soviet embassy. In two hours, the Soviet advisor appeared and said, “His name was Amenkhotep 2 rd.”
“How did you find out?”
“He confessed,” the advisor said.
Published in General
This brings back some fun memories.
Funny because true, until you read a little more about the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, and then they are actually terrifying, because true.
Where is Yakov Smirnov when you need him!
Q: Comrade is it true that in the Soviet Union the corn stalks grow like telephone poles?
A: Yes, sometimes they grow even further apart.
Q: Do you know what happened after the Bedouins of the Sahara adopted Communism?
A: Five years later they had to start importing sand.
A man walks into a butcher shop in Moscow.
Man: “Whats on sale today?”
Butcher: “Everything you see.”
Man: ” Okay, I’ll have one kilogram of meat hooks.”
In Rome emperor Augustus is siting is meeting with the Senate. Their deliberations are interrupted by loud noises from outside. A praetorian rushes in and announces that all of the slaves of Rome are out in the streets chanting. Augustus asks the praetorian what they are chanting. He answers that they are all shouting the same thing “All praise feudalism the Glorious Future of Mankind.”
One of my friends from Kazakhstan grew up in St. Petersburg. According to him, his grandfather was celebrating a friends birthday with four life-long friends. Like many Russian birthday parties, the Vodka was flowing. My friend says there were a few Stalin jokes told, although I’m not clear on how they know this. What we do know is that all four lifelong friends never made it home and all were sent to camps near the Western Front.
When the Germans were advancing, they asked the camp occupants to fight the Germans, some said yes, others said no. They took the volunteers and the guards and locked up the camp and left the remaining occupants to starve to death, which his grandfather did.
Later in the Soviet Union, jokes were tolerated more so than they were in Stalin’s time.
A couple of my favorites.
Why does Stalin wear knee-high boots when Lenin’s boots were only ankle high? Because in Lenin’s time, the [solid human excrement] was only ankle deep.
We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.
This is priceless.
http://youtu.be/2pEApsuaa1o
[EDIT: link b/c video did not embed]
Though I have to say, the jokes about getting preapproval for humor, and about 26-year-olds living at home, are beginning to take on a different sort of resonance.
In North Korea a man catches a fish, brings it home to his wife. “Lets fry this fish up and eat tonight!” “We have no oil with which to fry it. ” She says. “Then fill a pot with water to boil them” “We haven’t got a pot.” Growing frustrated, he says “Then get me a knife and I’ll clean it and cook it on the coals.” “We haven’t got any knives either” she replies. Furious, he throws the fish back in the river. The fish lifts it’s head out of the water and says “Long Live Kim Jong Un!”
A couple years ago a teacher in Cuba was explaining the situation to her young students. She pulled up a picture of George W. Bush and says “Do you know who this man is?” to a field of blank stares. She says “This is the man that’s ruining our country, that’s driving us into poverty, that’s making all Cubans miserable!” The light dawns on one of the little boys and he says “Oh! I didn’t recognize him after he shaved off his beard!”
“Soviet Union Announces World’s Largest Microchip!”
Or there was the little girl who’s cat had just given birth. Her teacher asked how the kittens were doing, and she says “They’re all good communists.” Pleased, the teacher asked after the communist kittens several days later. “Terrible news, comrade Teacher! The kittens have all opened their eyes and renounced communism!”
Word spreads that a local Moscow butcher is expecting a shipment of fresh meat. Soon a line of would-be customers forms around the block. They wait resignedly in the dead of winter for this rare treat. After an hour of enduring sub-freezing temperatures, the butcher comes out and announces that he’s just learned that the shipment is not as large as he was promised and certainly not enough to supply everyone on line. He tells all the Jews on line to go home.
After another hour, he announces that black market thieves stole most the meat. He only expects enough for Communist Party members. All those without party membership cards are told to leave. The line thins out to only a dozen or so apparatchiks. Another hour passes. Icicles are hanging from beards and noses. The butcher comes out again and announces that the delivery truck has run out of gas. No meat today. The party members grumble as the leave the line. One gripes to his comrades, “It’s always like this! The Jews get all the breaks!”
I just read these to my Romanian wife, who was in college when their revolution overthrew communism. She not only got a big laugh out of these, she also said that in Romania they also told the one about the KGB teams and the one about the eggs. But in their version, it ends with the woman scolding her husband, “Why are you here checking in on me, when they have eggs for sale?”
anonymous includes that great video of Reagan’s Soviet jokes. I heard several of these on XM Radio, a while back. My favorite was,
“A Russian man saves up for years to buy a car, and he finally has enough money. He goes to the dealer and carefully picks out the one he wants. The dealer says, ‘Very good. Your car will be delivered to you in ten years.’
Shocked, the man asks, ‘Ten years.’
‘Yes,’ the dealer replies.
‘Morning or afternoon?’ the man asks.
‘It’s ten years from now…what does it matter?’
‘Well…the plumber is coming in the morning.'”
…I told that one to the Mrs. (from Romania, remember), waiting for her to laugh at the punch line. Instead, she was silent for a moment or two, thinking hard. Then she said slowly, “For my parents, it was three years.”
I was really enjoying these…until I got to this one
Q: How does every Russian joke start?
A: By looking over your shoulder.
These days it feels like that’s how American jokes start too.
Wonderful! The man could really tell a story, and what a sweet guy. Unlike Obama, Reagan actually liked his job.
Q: How do we know Marxism isn’t scientific?
A: Scientists would have tried it on rats first.
Two strangers are standing at the curb in Moscow watching the cars go by. A Zhiguli and a Ford go by. “Tell me, comrade, which do you think is better?” “The Zhiguli. of course”. The light changes, and now it’s a Moskvich and a foreign diplomat’s Mercedes. “And now?” “The Moskvich. It’s clearly superior”. Finally a Zaporozhets and a Rolls Royce pass them. “Surely this time the Rolls is a better car”. “No, comrade, I would take the “Zapo” anytime”.
“Say, you really don’t know anything about cars, do you?”
“No, comrade, I don’t know anything about you“.
And loved America.
An American and a Russian General meet up at Disarmament talks and start boasting about their armies. The Russian general says “My army is the best fed army in the world. Each day the Red Army soldier eats 1500 calories”.
The American Army General says “That’s nothing, the US Army gets 4000 calories a day”.
The Russian says “Nonsense, nobody can eat that many Potatoes in a day”.
How do you make Chicken Kiev?
First, preheat city to 350 degrees…
Here’s my contribution: Larry Miller from his podcast on ACE Broadcasting.
Favorite Soviet slogan (now applicable here, sadly): “In the Soviet Union, the past…
is very hard to predict.”