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CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

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211–220 of 272 posts

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#211
post #136

A man is walking down the street carrying a 12-roll pack of toilet paper. People surround him, all excited: "Where'd you get that?" The man answers, "I just got it back from the dry cleaner's!" (source: Viktor Suvorov's fascinating Kuzkina Mat [1]) [1]: http://andrewnurnberg.com/book/kuzkina-mat/

I don't get this one?

I assume the implication is that the only way to obtain fresh toilet paper was to "recycle" it.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#212
post #201

The real question is: why CIA had classified Russian jokes on their file?

Well the title is "Soviet Jokes for the DDCI", where DDCI seems to stand for "Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence (Agency)". My guess is they had someone compile them for their use and they were just classified by default along with the other documents of the office.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Group of CIA agents are thinking about how to invent a joke for Russian communists. With great struggle they invented a joke about butter. Now, to test their joke, they secretly landed near a city in Siberia and told their joke to a men. Men does not laugh. CIA asking — «Are you understanding the joke? — Yeah, I understand the joke, but what is „butter“?».

This is classy "foreign design", something to counter with a good internally produced one.

Moscow was supplied much often and better than rest of the towns around Moscow, and so forth. It was common practice to ride to Moscow to buy something that is not available locally. Moscow was number 1 in supply line, Moscow region and capital cities of other republics was number 2, European cities are number 3, rest was number 4 or (in practice) even lower, so it was expected that someone in Siberia, far far away from Moscow, never saw a good quality product for his whole life. Butter was example of high quality product, while margarine was low quality substitute which was widely available.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#214

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…

It's also a joke on the Russian language, it doesn't translate well. "You don't have any meat?" is the word-for-word translation of the polite way to ask if they have meat.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#215
post #201

The real question is: why CIA had classified Russian jokes on their file?

Well the title is "Soviet Jokes for the DDCI", where DDCI seems to stand for "Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence (Agency)". My guess is they had someone compile them for their use and they were just classified by default along with the other documents of the office.

"Tell us some Soviet secrets or we will make you LAUGH!"

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unless you refer to old(er) working class women with a hard life I don't see how any reasonable person can think that's even remotely a basis for a joke, given how much more beautiful Russian women look on average. Just walk around Russian cities. Having lived in the US for a decade and having been to Russia and Ukraine several times, sometimes for months living in a rented apartment, I know which country I'd choose…

PC groupthink downvoted you, have a +1 from me.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#217
post #72
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…

An eagle, tired from a long flight, lands in a tree. It looks around and is startled to see a cow is in the tree as well. "What are you doing in this tree?" says the eagle. "Well, I came up here to eat apples," replies the cow. "But this is a pine tree." "Ah, you see, I brought my own." (Lady who told me that was from Kamchatka.)

This one has that sublime absurdist quality so characteristic of eastern europe but it keeps you thinking and translating the characters and concepts into real world situations. Love it.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#218
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was just joking around, he memed you.

> he memed you No. This has to stop. For the love of all that is good and holy this has to be the line in the sand that we do not cross. This is too much for the English language to take and still survive. Meme cannot be a verb.

>> Meme cannot be a verb.

Yeah, stop verbing your nouns, dammit.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#219
post #73

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…

A Brazillian similar joke. Italy government was choosing who to build the bridge (maybe the one in the previous joke). 3 contractors made bids, a German, an US, and a Brazillian one. The German bid that for 40 million he could make a near indestructible steel bridge with perfect tolerances. The US company tried to do the opposite, they offered to make a cheap concrete bridge, with "just enough" within the requirement…

This is how must things in Russia are built after the fall of the USSR.

Except there's no competition between 2 contractors, so for 40 million, you get a shoddy 10 million bridge, and 15 goes into the politician who approved the project and 15 to his contractor buddy.

(Or the contractor buddy and the politician are actually the same person, so they just get 30 million)

The added benefit is that the shoddy construction falls apart quicker, so you can request 40 million again in a few years.

Re: CIA Declassified Coldwar Russian Jokes [pdf]

#220
post #202

Back in USSR, everyone thought that it is KGB who tracks these jokes and those who spread them. Who knew it was CIA all the time? :)

It's "all along". Not "all the time" ))) ex. Who knew it was the CIA all along?

Right. Thank you, comrade!
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