Political Humor under Stalin is an anthology of jokes, wisecracks, and satire from the Soviet 1930s and '40s that provides a glimpse of everyday dissembling and dissent in one of the modern world's most repressive societies. More than merely a joke book, it offers no less than a folkloric counter-narrative to the official history of the USSR, as well as a ground-breaking discussion of the culture of joke-telling under Stalin.

It's Only a Joke, Comrade! uncovers how ordinary people joked, coped, and struggled to adapt in Stalin's brave new world. It asks what it means to live under a dictatorship: How do people make sense of their lives? How do they talk about it? And whom can they trust to do so?

After the death of Joseph Stalin, Soviet-era Russia experienced a flourishing artistic movement due to relaxed censorship and new economic growth. In this new atmosphere of freedom, Russia’s satirical magazine Krokodil (The Crocodile) became rejuvenated. John Etty explores Soviet graphic satire through Krokodil and its political cartoons. He investigates the forms, production, consumption, and functions of Krokodil, focusing on the period from 1954 to 1964. Krokodil remained the longest-serving and most important satirical journal in the Soviet Union, unique in producing state-sanctioned graphic satirical comment on Soviet and international affairs for over seventy years. Etty’s analysis of Krokodil extends and enhances our understanding of Soviet graphic satire beyond state-sponsored propaganda. For most of its life, Krokodil consisted of a sixteen-page satirical magazine comprising a range of cartoons, photographs, and verbal texts. Authored by professional and nonprofessional contributors and published by Pravda in Moscow, it produced state-sanctioned satirical comment on Soviet and international affairs from 1922 onward. Soviet citizens and scholars of the USSR recognized Krokodil as the most significant, influential source of Soviet graphic satire. Indeed, the magazine enjoyed an international reputation, and many Americans and Western Europeans, regardless of political affiliation, found the images pointed and witty. Astoundingly, the magazine outlived the USSR but until now has received little scholarly attention.

A chilling, riveting account based on newly released Russian documentation that reveals Joseph Stalin’s true motives—and the extent of his enduring commitment to expanding the Soviet empire—during the years in which he seemingly collaborated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the capitalist West. At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Joseph Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader, whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, and not communist ideology. Now, using recently uncovered documents, Robert Gellately conclusively shows that, in fact, the dictator was biding his time, determined to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond. His actions during those years—and the poorly calculated responses to them from the West—set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. Exciting, deeply engaging, and shrewdly perceptive, Stalin’s Curse is an unprecedented revelation of the sinister machinations of Stalin’s Kremlin.

It is important to remember the crucial era of modern history dominated by Soviet Russia and Red China, symbolized by Stalin and Mao, through Communist-style humor. The jokes were created mainly in the West, but also within the Communist system, which produced a rich sample of humor about political rule, music, oppression of the common man, and other realities of Communism. After tensions were thought dissipated between the superpowers, and capitalism was declared the winner, Communism was thought to have disappeared. But with the renewal of world difficulties, there is a need to reminisce on how Communism was conceived through Soviet jokes. Red Humor is divided into the Czarist period to Stalin’s era, supplemented by memorable one-liners that immortalize that seven-decade harsh era. The author wrote this joke collection “to collect those bits of humor before they are forgotten.” A Jew was dying in his bed during a bitterly cold and snowy night in Russia. He called his wife to his side and faintly murmured: - Sarah! The time has come! Call the Priest! - The Priest? Are you crazy Abraham? You mean Rabbi! - No, Sarah, I mean the Priest. I don’t want to disturb the Rabbi in such terrible weather as this.

If politics is a serious matter and humour a funny one, this volume investigates how and why the boundaries between the two are blurred: politics can be represented in a humorous manner and humour can have a serious intent. It shows how political humour can be manipulated in public debates or become an integral part of postmodern art.

Content: Written from his experiences as a vice-president of Yugoslavia and aide to Tito, the author here records face to face meetingwith Stalin from 1944-1953. The author was imprisoned by the Yugoslav government from 1957-1961.