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Of Tears and Laughter: Humor and Satire in Post-Soviet Russia Olga Mesropova, Iowa State University What is humor? It's salvation. And tears? They are life. Therefore laughter through tears has been our most important achievement. -Mikhail Zhvanetsky, 20011 In one of his recent monologues the prominent Russian satirical writer and stand-up comedian Mikhail Zhvanetsky comments: "We know by experience that a low quality of life breeds a high quality of humor. Humor today has gotten unbearably bad. Guess what this means... Well, let's drink to that!,, 2 Whether one agrees with Zhvanetsky's allusion to the declining state of humor (or the improving quality of life) in today's Russia, post-Soviet humor and satire are unquestionably different from their Soviet and perestroika-era predecessors. It is the aim of this collection to analyze what conflicts, values, and tropes have informed Russian humor and satire since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Uncensored? Reinventing Humor al1d Satire in Post-Soviet Russia also discusses the role that humor and satire have played in Russian society under Yeltsin and Putin and explores the satirical modality in a broad range of post-Soviet media and genres. The volume's contributors pose a wide array of related questions: Did Russians, as some critics suggest, "stop joking" once they had freedom of speech?3 Has satire abdicated its central role in Russian literature and cinema? Has satire been reduced to mere entertainment? Who and what are the principal targets of post-Soviet humorous and satirical expression ? To what extent are Russian satirists free to express themselves in today's Russia? As a whole the articles present a series of compelling observations about satire, humor, censorship, and freedom in Russia since 1991. The analytical and theoretical frameworks of this volume span the timeframe from 1991 to the present, a period when Russian humor and satire truly had to be "reinvented." Indeed, in the Soviet Union humor and satire were 1 Mikhail Zhvanetskii, "Polnyi Zhvanetskii," interview by Valentina Serikova, Ogonek, 17-18 April 2001, http://www.ogoniok.com/archive/2001l4692-4693117-46-S01 (accessed 26 November 2005). All translations in this introduction are my own. 2 Irina Petrovskaia, "Prazdnik duraka: Televersiia," Izvestiia, 4 April 2003. 3 Christie Davies, Jokes and their Relation to Society (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1998), 82. Uncensored? Reinventing Humor and Satire in Post-Soviet Russia . Olga Mesropova and Seth Graham, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2008, 1- 8. 2 OLGA MESROPOVA usually defined vis-it-vis Soviet dogma and functioned either in overt support of or in covert opposition to the communist regime.4 Pro-Soviet, "official" satire served as "an enthusiastic partisan" of the Soviet state by mocking deviations from the Communist Party lines Simultaneously, as a form of "attack on control," humor and satire (coupled with an ironic worldview) provided writers , filmmakers, and artists with an unofficial outlet for expressing their frustrations with Soviet rule6 Moreover, while most satirists were unable to express their dissident views under the pressures of censorship, they often resorted to satirical messages hidden behind the subtlety of Aesopian language . Censorship, as Lev Loseff has demonstrated, contributed positively to satirical writing as it forced artists to discover creative and understated satirical modes? This volume's discussion of post-Soviet laughter examines two comedic forms: humor and satire. Although these two forms often symbiotically share certain constituent tropes, satire dominated Soviet official and unofficial discourses . Because satire was ideologically safe and easily molded to the messages of propaganda, Soviet critics tended to stress the social importance of satire and devalue the role of humor8 As Nikita Khrushchev aptly put it, satire was "armed in defense of our Party and the people" with the intention of destroying "everything that hinders our advancement towards commu4 Although restricted and inspired by a single official discourse, Soviet-era humor and satire did not present a monolithic entity. For example, satire under Stalin differs from the more liberal satirical expression during the Khrushchev Thaw. For more on the development of Soviet satirical expression in a variety of genres, see Karen Ryan-Hayes, Contemporary Russiml Satire: A Genre Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Emil Draitser, Taking Penguins to the Movies: Ethnic Humor in Russia (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998); Seth Graham, "A Cultural Analysis of the RussoSoviet Anekdot" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2003); Anatoly Vishevsky, Soviet Literary Culture in the 1970s: The Politics of Irony (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993); and Andrew Horton, Inside Soviet...

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