The things I learn

[lapsedmodernist]

My parents are full of interesting revelations^*.

Here are two things that I learned about their Soviet Youth while they were visiting me here in Ecuador:

Dad's Story

Apparently in 1970 my dad was making some extra cash, working at the exhibit in honor of the 100-year anniversary of Lenin's birth. He said that the day before the exhibit opened the "appropriate authorities" sent censors to do a final once-over. Among the items vetoed by the censors was a photograph in the Fishing/Forestry sector, a good old socially-realist photograph of a fisherman catching a huge hundred-year old pike. Understandably, the photograph was entitled "The Hundred-Year Pike." The poor photographer, on the verge of losing his mind, could not understand what he did wrong, and why his photograph was being censored. The Authorities provided an explanation: "What is this exhibit honoring? Lenin's hundred-year anniversary. What is your photograph called? The hundred-year pike. What exactly are you trying to imply?" Dad said that the photographer went insane soon thereafter, and the Pike photograph was replaced by a print by a photographer from Our Friend Cuba. Dad said the print was a gorgeous shot of a gibbon engaged in an act of onanism.

Mom's Story

Turns out mom had dinner with either Watson or Crick. She couldn't remember which, but she remembered that it was whichever one died recently. So I surmise it was Crick.

Okay, I have to go meet an informant (damn, that sounds weird in the context of Soviet Stories).

^* Like the one about my siblings, I mean me having them.

Comments

[rootlesscosmo.livejournal.com]

An East German Communist we met in Lisbon in 1977 told us this Lenin Centenary story:

A contest is organized for clockmakers in honor of Lenin. Third prize goes to a clock with a tiny bird that emerges every hour and chirps Lenin's slogan for the youth: "Study! Study! Study!" Second prize, the bird emerges every hour and says "Lenin! Lenin!" Grand prize, a tiny Lenin emerges every hour and says "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

He had snarky stories about Ceausescu and Walter Ulbricht. too.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

that sounds like one of the many anecdotes about Lenin. Like the one about his 100 anniversary when a number of factory directors were fired for overzealousness because they produced the following products: a bra called Lenin´s Mountains, a cologne called Eau de Lenin, a three-person bed called Lenin is Always With Us and a cuckoo clock where every hour a tiny Lenin comes out in a tank and says "Comrades, the Great October Socialst Revoltion cuckoo"

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

this also reminded me of an anecdote about a statue contest on the 100 year anniversary of Pushkin´s birth (this is a Stalin-era anecdote)

The third prize went to a statue of Pushkin reading Stalin's work
The second prize went to a statue of Stalin reading Pushkin's work
The first prize went to a statue of Stalin reading Stalin's work.

[rootlesscosmo.livejournal.com]

Rumanian CP organizes a membership drive, with prizes. You recruit one new member, you don't have to attend branch meetings for six months. Three new members, you get to leave the Party. Five new members, you get an exit visa plus a letter stating you were never a Communist so you can be admitted to the US.

Besides the interesting formal resemblances (first, second, third) it strikes me that these Existing Socialism jokes are actually jokes on Existing Socialism, while jokes from the capitalist world (if that's a fair way of designating what we inhabit) are jokes on... aspects or features, but not the system itself. Is this true? I visited the USSR in 1980, as part of an organized tour of railway workers hosted by the railway trade union; even with all that structure, and with only a few words of the language, I began to detect a pervasive cynicism that contradicted all the official stories we were being given, and which--I may as well admit--I was disposed to believe. Is this analogous to the cynicism displayed in our demotic culture, or is something different at work? And is this a proper subject for comparative ethnography?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Besides the interesting formal resemblances (first, second, third) it strikes me that these Existing Socialism jokes are actually jokes on Existing Socialism, while jokes from the capitalist world (if that's a fair way of designating what we inhabit) are jokes on... aspects or features, but not the system itself

I totally agree. I think it has to do with an Eastern Block tendency to code critique in jokes and science fiction, whereas that didn't pan out the same way in the US. Incidentally, and obviously I am biased, but that's why I think Soviet/Russian jokes are funny: a) they are systemic and b) they are more frequently absurd because the system is absurd. But in terms of absurdity capitalism could give socialism a run for its money, what I saying is, there is a goldmine of capitalist jokes not brought forth into existence.

[rootlesscosmo.livejournal.com]

there is a goldmine of capitalist jokes not brought forth into existence.

Could this be a hegemony issue? That is, most people living under capitalism, even its mortal enemies, have trouble imagining a world without it, without profit-maximizing and individualism and "Accumulate! Accumulate!" etc. etc.--which is another way of saying that "the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas," are in short hegemonic. Whereas the Soviets--and still less the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe--never succeeded in winning this kind of hegemony.

Western Communist joke: Soviet citizen tells his friend he wants to overthrow the system and reintroduce capitalism. Friend: Nah, you can't change human nature.

But this was a wishful dream, never a reality, though of course Leftists in the West were forever hearing that objection, un-ironically I might add, when they tried to argue that capitalism might be replaceable by something fairer. What was so striking about the collapse in Eastern Europe was that (as far as I know) no one rallied to the system's defense.

[gordonzola.livejournal.com]

I love jokes like this. I really, really do. The "hundred year pike" had me on the floor.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

haha, but that was a true story!

Although Soviet Reality often had that thing that I wrote about in a recent post on irony, about is it funny or is it just true

Here is an old Soviet joke that's not really funny anymore, because the humor is such jokes is directly proportional to the level of hyperbole, and the joke is no longer hyperbolic. Therefore it's not funny, it's just true.

So, the joke goes like this:
A Jew decides to emmigrate and goes to get an exit visa. Of course, he gets grilled by the KGB. They put a globe before him and say
-So you want to leave the Soviet Union, the best country in the whole world? Where are you going to go?
-America.
-You don't want to go to America, in America gangsters shoot people on the street and also they lynch black people.
-Ok, I will go to Israel.
-Israel is surrounded by hostile countries that want to bring about its destruction. It's like living on a landmine.
-Ok, I will go to Germany.
-In Germany they exterminated 6 million of your people, they don't like your kind there.
-Ok, I will go to Australia
-In Australia everyone is a former criminal, also it's really far away from everywhere else and it will soon sink into the ocean.
This goes on for a while, and finally the Jew pleads:
-Do you by any chance have another globe?

So, my new point/counterpoint, the one that I feel I am actively living out (more so than ever since the reCoronation) is this:

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE VS. DO YOU HAVE ANOTHER GLOBE?