Red Laughter: On Refined Weapons of Soviet Jesters

Abstract

Following closely the public debates about the nature and purpose of distinctively Soviet laughter and comedy in the 1920-1950s, this essay distills rationales used by producers of Stalinist culture for determining a socially acceptable discursive place for the comic in Soviet Russia. As the essay demonstrates, these debates reveal a complicated argumentative strategy devised by the Soviet political and cultural authorities in order to reclaim, appropriate and adapt for the needs of the socialist state previously ignored comic genres.