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CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

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Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#61

Post by andrei_says_ »

sverige wrote: post #59
andrei_says_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, and, it is my belief that the oppression and absurdity (and alcoholism) were taken to extremes during the "commu/socialist" era. And so the humor was typically cynical, absurd and predominantly dark.

I learned Russian and German in college in the early '80s and knew a fair number of emigrants from the former Soviet bloc (Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, East Germans). They all shared this same sense of humor. Which served them well once they figured out they weren't going to become millionaires just because they made it to the U.S.

Still waiting for the Americans to figure it out...

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#62

Post by andrei_says_ »

sverige wrote: post #60
andrei_says_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice :)

Remembered another I learned from a Russian. A man and his wife live in Siberia. Every day she nags him about his drinking and his terrible friends and how he never helps her around the house. It always ends with her yelling at him to go out and bring in some wood for the stove. One day after the usual fight, the man gets to the woodpile and just keeps walking. Twenty years later, he returns. He walks into the kitche…

If you've seen Russian wives you now this is not a joke (ducks).

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#63

Post by pandaman »

mlillie wrote: post #16

OK, I need to add my favorite Russian joke here: A German and a Russian die. Neither has been the best person in their life, so they get sent down there. When they arrive in hell, the devil says, "Well, especially bad people have been dying lately, and we're all full up. I can only accept one of you, the other will go to purgatory and get a chance at redemption." He proposes a simple test of their human decency: Each…

I know a different angle of this one. Reagan visits the USSR and is amazed by the capital construction he has seen.

Reagan: "How do you manage to build structures like this? Your logistics is shit, you have no technology and people are apathetic."

Gorbachev: "Soviet people built it all with great enthusiasm and while singing songs".

Reagan: "Bullshit, it's impossible to motivate people like this in your system. You don't even pay them money!"

Gorbachev: "On the contrary, my friend. It's impossible to motivate people like this in your system. I will prove it to you. Take a cat and motivate it to eat a jar of mustard (Russian mustard is spicy), I will wait."

Reagan's aides spend whole day trying to make the cat eat mustard. They try hiding it in other foods, forcing it to eat, talking to it but the cat just refuses.

Reagan: "Well, it appears to be impossible to make the damn cat eat this mustard. I doubt you can do it though".

Gorbachev orders his aide and he puts a handful of mustard under the cat's tail. The cat starts wailing and desperately licking the mustard off his balls.

Gorbachev: "Like I said, with great enthusiasm and singing a song".

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#64

Post by DenisM »

te_platt wrote: post #54
DenisM wrote: post #51

Russians have a user-generated site that contains every single Russian joke that there was: http://anekdot.ru The site has been up since mid-nineties, iirc.

So I had the page translated to English. I think the jokes might be funnier in Russian. Still there is something funny in knowing there is a joke in there ... somewhere.

They aren't all funny, that's the point. Users submit jokes, then they get voted on, in several rounds, then best ones bubble up to the top.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#66

Post by hadfgdasf »

te_platt wrote: post #54
DenisM wrote: post #51

Russians have a user-generated site that contains every single Russian joke that there was: http://anekdot.ru The site has been up since mid-nineties, iirc.

So I had the page translated to English. I think the jokes might be funnier in Russian. Still there is something funny in knowing there is a joke in there ... somewhere.

Here's one that seems to survive, with a little bit of humor intact:

Most of the women claims that there is nothing more painful birth! But what hit the balls ?! After the woman said for some time: "Why not give birth to another baby ?!" Have you ever met the guy who says, "Well, embedding-ka me in the balls still a time ?!"

Orig: Большинство женщин утверждает, что нет ничего больнее родов! А как же удар по яйцам?! Спустя какое-то время женщина говорит: "А почему бы не родить еще одного ребенка?!" Вы когда-либо встречали мужика, который скажет: "А ну, врежь-ка мне по яйцам еще разочек?!"

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#67

Post by mc32 »

kafkaesq wrote: post #30
hprotagonist wrote: post #7

Regan was actually not bad at telling soviet jokes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN3z3eSVG7A

You know, if you were actually living through that era his sense of "humor" (combined with the suspicion, then widely assumed among leftist, now since medically substantiated) that he was most likely suffering from some form of early-onset dementia -- well, it got old real fast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_begin_bombing_in_five_minut...

It's quite possible he said Russia rather than Soviet Union in order to make it clear it was a joke.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#69

Post by vidarh »

kafkaesq wrote: post #30
hprotagonist wrote: post #7

Regan was actually not bad at telling soviet jokes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN3z3eSVG7A

You know, if you were actually living through that era his sense of "humor" (combined with the suspicion, then widely assumed among leftist, now since medically substantiated) that he was most likely suffering from some form of early-onset dementia -- well, it got old real fast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_begin_bombing_in_five_minut...

"How Close Did Lesley Stahl Come to Reporting Reagan Had Alzheimer's While in Office? Very Close." [1] is one terrifying account of just how far gone he might have been even that early.

In 1987, when Howard Baker became White House Chief of Staff he was advised to be prepared to invoke the 25th amendment. According to PBS [2]:

> What Baker's transition team was told by Donald Regan's staff that weekend shocked them. Reagan was 'inattentive, inept,' and 'lazy,' and Baker should be prepared to invoke the 25th Amendment to relieve him of his duties.

It's worth comparing the follow-up quote in [2] - Baker and his staff saw Reagan animated and "in command of himself" and assumed there was no issue - with Stahl's account, and considering that dementia-patients can go from bad to fully functioning and back again in seconds and can keep at that for years, often frustrating the process of a diagnosis. Both my grandmothers managed to hide their Alzheimers for many years, until it finally got too much.

But it's quite terrifying that someone in his position was not diagnosed officially until '94.

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/reagan-alzheimer...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_... - search for Howard Baker

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#70

Post by zokat »

I like this one:

Russian engineer got fed up of having all responsibility and low salary, so he moves to another city and pretends to be an ordinary worker, same salary and peace of mind. However, not long after communist party sends him to evening classes. On his first day there at maths class he was asked about circle circumference formula, but for some reason he could not remember it off hand, so he goes on blackboard and tries to work it out with linear integral. After exhausting whole blackboard he finally gets the result:

-2RPi

Then all of the sudden he hears all of the class whispering to him: "Change the direction of integration!"

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