We would be the only two left.” Cummings looks at Boris in astonishment. “Well I would,” says Boris, “only I’m afraid everyone would rush out. 5: Boris + Cummings in No.10 “Why don’t you want to reopen the borders?” asks Cummings. Repurposed Soviet Joke No.4 with improved gendering: A spouse returns home to find their partner in bed with someone else: “You disgust me! This is how you behave! Any self respecting citizen is out panic buying!” Newspapers of course, you can’t wipe your ass on a TV!
Which is more useful for communicating public information messages newspapers or the TV? A. His wife to him: “I thought we agreed to not talk about the pandemic in public!” 2: Retired married couple on the bus: Old man let’s out big sigh. The shop that doesn’t have any toilet paper is next door. This is the shop that doesn’t have any paracetamol. Repurposed Soviet Joke: – Does this shop have any toilet paper? – No. They may not still be funny (or even have been funny at the time), but they are both a prompt for thinking about Soviet history, and also what was happening in Britain earlier in the pandemic. In the interests of posterity I have listed the first 88 of these jokes here on my blog. In order to understand these jokes you you need to understand the historical context, as well as what was happening in Britain at this moment in time. I also thought it might be a useful activity in engaging my students with Russian and Soviet history.
Inspired by Jonathan Waterlow’s brilliant book It’s Only A Joke, Comrade!: Humour, Trust and Everyday Life under Stalin (1928-1941) I wanted to see what value humour might have a in difficult and dark time. At the start of the pandemic in the United Kingdom as some form of lockdown at least looked possible, and as universities began to move teaching online, I began a mini project trying to repurpose Soviet joke.
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