The Anger of Compassion

What's colder than Communist cold water? Hot water!

Long-time readers will know that I'm an aficionado of Communist humor. Go thou, then, and check out this essay, "Hammer & Tickle," by Ben Lewis. Have fun!

Exactly how communist jokes functioned politically, socially or psychologically is a question as complex as the meaning of works of art. What is self-evident, however, is that since the fall of the wall the jokes have dried up. Life just isn't as funny any more. The vast enterprise of communism gave a universal quality to the meaning of the jokes that hasn't been replicated since its collapse. They subverted and they supported; they undermined and they prolonged. As Gorbachev's respect for the jokes and Reagan's obsession with them show, they were intrinsic to the whole communist experience. Jokes were to communism what myths were to ancient Greece: anonymous, oral stories which both represented and shaped people's views and actions.

Jokes may not have carried the weight of the great forces which ended communism, but they were more than mere figures of speech. Jokes kept alive in the minds of the citizens of the Soviet bloc the idea of an alternative reality, and they made light of four decades of occupation of eastern and central Europe. They may even explain why the end of communism was so sudden and so bloodless. No point anyone getting hurt over a little joke, right?