USSR Humor

I stumbled upon this gem stacked in the middle of French joke collection in the college library (don't ask me what I was doing there). But I'm so glad that I did! This one is the best collection of Soviet Era Political jokes that I have ever laid my eyes on. The jokes are short stories or an exchange of dialogue, ending with an (mostly) unexpected punchline. They are called “anekdoty” (literally “anecdotes”) in Russian. Let me give you an example from the book:Two Russian workers were talking about how near they were to Socialism. One said, “The Party told me that Socialism is on the horizon. I don't know what that meant. So I looked it up in the dictionary and read that a horizon is an imaginary line which moves further away from you as you approach it.”As you might expect from such book, jokes are centered around socialism, secret police, the political figures and Russian stereotypes about the outside world. Sadly, though, many jokes can be lifted to present day Indian world by a simple change of nouns :