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Earlier quoted context omitted.
You would if you lived in a country where merchandise was available infrequently. Stores often were empty of any wares - so fish store is empty of fish and meat store is empty of meat. ;)
Thanks. "No, this is the empty fish shop. The empty meat shop is across the street."
A bit different but here's my favorite European joke: An Italian politician invites his Greek politician friend over for a visit. The Greek pulls up in front of an elegant manor house and is welcomed by the staff. He walks in through a foyer with marble floors and a huge marble staircase with ornamental banisters and a crystal chandelier. They walk through to a lovely veranda overlooking the river, and sit down to ea…
For what is worth, essentially the same joke appears in The Hungarian Tiger by Tibor Fischer (a short book about how Viktor Orbán became Hungary PM, and why this is - all in all - a positive thing). I do not know if this joke was originated in Hungary, but I am Italian and I am pretty sure it's not an Italian joke.
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…
Wow, the joke that ends up with "I can stand in front of Kremlin and yell To Hell With Ronald Reigan too" is the famous one. One can even find the references to it nowadays in Russian blogs. CIA is good!
Abakumoff was a top KGB general, did you know that?
I understood every single joke on that list except this one: >A man goes into a shop and asks "You don't have any meat?". "No," replies the sales lady. "We don't have any fish. It's the store across the street that doesn't have any meat." I just don't get it at all... is it just a bad joke? I understand that stores ran out of products in that situation, but if you just had to walk across to street to get what you wer…
The other shop had not meat, implying the mission of every shop is not having what they were supposed to have.
Compare this dialogue to short but informative reply in the «joke» above.
Later, these responses are replaced with stickers like "No MEAT today" (it's meat shop, but we out of meat today, check us next morning) or "NO meat" (nobody saw a meat for at least two months, so don't ask us when it will be).
Maybe you understand this joke now:
Developed communism. «From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.» Sticker at the shop: «NO need in the meat today, comrades».
Earlier quoted context omitted.
...but it helps.
WW3 is just over. Some men in hazmat suits walk through a deserted and bombed out city, geiger meters screeching. Suddenly, they see three men setting in a park, playing cards. Curious, they walk over and ask - how can you be alive, you have no protective gear? - Oh, we are from Krakow.
Some of these seem more like jokes the CIA would have liked to have Russians tell each other more than jokes they actually told each other.
- I came to work 5 minutes late, I was sentenced to 10 years for sabotage
Second one says:
- I came to work 5 minutes early, I was sentenced to 10 years for espionage.
Third one says:
- I came to work precisely on time, I was sentenced to 15 years for contraband of foreign clocks.