{"id":76,"date":"2020-07-05T16:59:35","date_gmt":"2020-07-05T15:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/?p=76"},"modified":"2020-07-05T17:24:20","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T16:24:20","slug":"book-review-its-only-a-joke-comrade-humor-trust-and-everyday-life-under-stalin-written-by-jonathan-waterlow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/2020\/07\/05\/book-review-its-only-a-joke-comrade-humor-trust-and-everyday-life-under-stalin-written-by-jonathan-waterlow\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: It\u2019s Only a Joke Comrade! Humor, Trust and Everyday Life under Stalin, written by Jonathan Waterlow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I had the enormous pleasure of reviewing Jonathan Waterlow’s brilliant book It\u2019s Only a Joke Comrade! Humour, Trust and Everyday Life under Stalin <\/em>(Oxford: CreateSpace, 2018), for Soviet and Post-Soviet Review<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a pre-print of a Book Review which was published in The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review <\/em>Vol. 37, No. 2(June, 2020): 242\u201345. The published version can be accessed at: https:\/\/brill.com\/view\/journals\/spsr\/47\/2\/article-p242_14.xml<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Jonathan Waterlow, It\u2019s Only a Joke Comrade! Humour, Trust and\nEveryday Life under Stalin <\/em>(Oxford: CreateSpace, 2018), xxi + 285 pp.\n\u00a314.99 (pb), ISBN 978-1-985-63582-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stalinism is not usually associated with\nlaughter. The debates provoked by the withdrawal of a Russian screening licence\nfor Armando Iannucci\u2019s black comedy The Death of Stalin <\/em>in January 2018,\nfor example, testify to the complexities of playing Stalin\u2019s murderous regime\nfor laughs. Yet as Jonathan Waterlow\u2019s perceptive book reminds us, ordinary\nSoviet citizens frequently laughed and joked about the darkest moments of the\n1930s. Humour provided a coping mechanism and a means of creating community in\nthe bleakest of times. Far from a frivolous subject, this study breaks new\nground in examining how Stalinist citizens made sense of the world around them,\nand the psychological mechanisms required to live under an authoritarian regime.\n\u201cStudying their jokes,\u201d as Waterlow notes, \u201cbrings their experiences back to\nlife and contradicts many long-held views of the period as one of fearful\natomisation or gullible belief in Stalin.\u201d (2) Through humour, and the social\nand psychological bonds it engendered, many people found ways to deal with the\nprivations, pressures and uncertainties of Stalinism. Jokes (anekdoty<\/em>),\nhumorous ditties (chastushki<\/em>), wordplay, graffiti, visual humour, and\nother forms of mockery are central to this study, but its contributions stretch\nbeyond immediate exploration of what was funny to wider discussions of social\nstructures, psychological mechanisms, Stalinist subjectivities, and the reach\nof Soviet ideology. Humour was frequently more than a joke! Subsumed within the\nvibrant joke telling culture of the 1930s was a complex web of social meanings,\npractices and relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most\nimpressive aspects of this book is the richness and variety of its primary\nresearch. Its evidence has been diligently pieced together from across the\narchival record; the tone and inflection of past language read with great care\nand sensitive. Material relating to humour is often fleeting and fragmentary, but\nthis research offsets weaknesses in specifics sources by triangulating between\na wide range of documents. Waterlow eschews late-Soviet published collections\nof recycled and decontextualized anekdoty<\/em>, which reveal little about how\nthey were told. Svodki<\/em>, summaries of popular mood and opinion, and the\nreview files for anti-Soviet agitation cases conducted by the USSR procuracy\nprovide more vivid insights into Stalin-era humour and its social functions. They\nare supplemented by the undervalued interviews of the Harvard Interview\nProject, the diaries of Stalinist citizens, and the accounts of western\nvisitors to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. These personal sources introduce a\ncast of characters whose stories are woven throughout the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The six chapters of It\u2019s\nOnly a Joke Comrade! <\/em>are structured in three parts, which in the author\u2019s\nown words flow, \u201cfrom a focus on the content and character of jokes themselves,\nto the repercussions of telling them, and on to the psychological and social\nmotivations and effects of sharing them.\u201d (10). Chapter 1 examines the multiple\nways in which Soviet citizens mocked their leaders, thereby asserting a \u201cquiet\npower\u201d and superiority over them. These humorous acts included concealed\ngraffiti, creative misspellings, moving portraits and banners to send sardonic\nmessages. These relatively minor subversions, provided an opportunity to place\nuntouchable leaders in ridiculous situations, poke fun and pick holes in\nofficial rhetoric. Far from being protected by his widespread personality cult,\nStalin was routinely and roundly mocked. Furthermore, the murder of the\nLeningrad party boss in Sergei Kirov in December 1934 was met by, \u201ca deluge of\ncarnivalesque, absurd, sexualised, violent and dirty humour.\u201d (32) These waves\nof scatological and sexual mockery were aimed at individuals and institutions,\nrather than the wider Soviet project. Chapter 2 examines the critical responses\nto key Stalinist policies, including state loan subscription campaigns, the\nFive-Year Plans, collectivisation, the \u2018Great Terror\u2019, the 1940 Labour Law and\nthe Nazi-Soviet pact. It provides a clear exploration of the content of popular\nhumour, as well as the range of creative responses to widespread hardships and\ntraumas. Far from being paralysed by fear, joke tellers harnessed gallows\nhumour to deflate propaganda. As we are reminded, \u201cterrible experiences could\nbe reconfigured to provoke pleasurable laughter, or at least to mitigate\noutright, resignation and despair.\u201d (77). Chapter 3 introduces the important\nconceptual innovation of crosshatching. In humour we can see a wealth of\nperspectives and attitudes about gender, religion, history, antisemitism, and\nmuch beside, that conflicted with official ideology. In Waterlow\u2019s analysis\nthese older cultural assumptions were crosshatched with the new Soviet\nworldview and values, in a complicated process of  hybridization. This notion offers an important\nrefinement to Stephen Kotkin\u2019s influential work, by demonstrating that many\npeople through their jokes were, \u201coften gleefully speaking more than\nBolshevik.\u201d (107). Through Waterlow\u2019s research the mechanisms by which,\n\u201celements of \u2018belief\u2019 and \u2018disbelief\u2019 appear to have coexisted within\neveryone,\u201d[1]<\/a>\nbecomes clearer. Hidden in humour were a variety of \u201cshadow languages\u201d (130)\nand \u201ccontraband meanings\u201d (132) that enable people to mediate official\nideology, created sense out of remarkable times, whilst blend criticism and\nacceptance of the regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 4 examines how\nthe Stalinist regime perceived the joke-telling population, and its attempts to\ncontain unofficial humour. Although the Bolshevik party-state wasn\u2019t humourless\nand deployed laughter as a didactic weapon to discredit its enemies, over the\ncourse of the 1930s the state\u2019s attitudes towards humour hardened. By 1935\njokes were seen as dangerous agents of viral infection. Keeping up with\nshifting official attitudes, combined with retrospective prosecution, made it\nhard for individuals to evaluate the risks they were taking whilst joking. Surprisingly,\nwho the joke teller was often mattered more than what they said when it came to\nprosecutions for anti-Soviet agitation. Women, the young, un-educated and\nblue-collar workers were considered a lower political threat than others. Nevertheless,\ntelling jokes was a risky and unpredictable business, but one that was worth it\nbecause of the important social functions humour fulfilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final two chapters\nexamine how telling jokes operated as a coping mechanism. Far from representing\nan oppositional act, as the controlling regime feared, joke telling, as chapter\n5 argues, could be understood as an exercise in adapting to and normalising\nextreme circumstances. Even mildly transgressive humour offered an opportunity\nto demonstrate personal agency and was empowering. Many jokes were underpinned\nby a desire that the regime should live up to its own rhetoric, rather than\nanti-Soviet sentiment. Indeed, it was in the cross-hatched spaces of humour\nthat many people resolved the confusing dissonance between official and\nunofficial discourses. \u201cHumour did not just pick holes in the fabric of the\nofficial world and its claims,\u201d (217) it represented an attempt to accommodate\noneself to the regime through a momentary act of self-deception. It also offered\nan opportunity to forge new social bonds and networks and build communities of\ntrust and mutual support. In chapter 6 Waterlow challenges the totalitarian\nargument that Stalinism atomised society, destroying public interactions. In contrast\nthe culture of joke telling reveals the persistence of unofficial forms of\nsociability, and the durability of trust groups. Sharing humour in the\ncircumstances of the 1930s was a process of intimating trust, of discovering whether\nothers held similar views, but with the possibility of back-tracking should the\nrisk seem to great. Jokes were also, \u201cactive, performative processes of\nidentity affirmation\u201d (245), which contributed to wider processes of\nself-fashioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing about humour without killing the joke takes great skill. Many of\nthe jokes retold in this book will prompt a chuckle, others belly laughs. Since\neach culture\u2019s humour has its own specificities, Waterlow sometimes needs to\nprovide historical context to explain precisely what Stalinist citizens found so\namusing. Yet, great care is taken to avoid over-analysing the sources. Indeed,\nthe author succeeds in preserving the humour through their own dry wit, and a\nlively turn of phrase. This is a\nbeautifully written and designed volume, which deserves a wide readershi It\noffers original perspectives on how ordinary citizens experienced Stalinism, and\nthe mechanisms by which they managed life in a highly authoritarian society. By\nvirtue of its accessible pricing it has every opportunity to reach far beyond\nthe academy. Historians of Stalinism whether their interests are political,\nsocial or cultural, will learn a much from this fantastic book, but it also has\nmuch to offer students and general readers keen to explore the vibrant world of\n1930s popular humour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert\nDale<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newcastle\nUniversity<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1396 words)
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/a> Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization<\/em> (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1995), 228.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had the enormous pleasure of reviewing Jonathan Waterlow’s brilliant book It\u2019s Only a Joke Comrade! Humour, Trust and Everyday Life under Stalin (Oxford: CreateSpace, 2018), for Soviet and Post-Soviet Review. This is a pre-print of a Book Review which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6000,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/robertdale\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}