Russian stuff, woo
NB for those who don't know: I'm taking a class called Russia Since 1917 with Stephen Cohen, who's one of the most well-known American Russianologists. Today's class consisted solely of him telling us political anecdotes from the Soviet Union. God, I love that class. The funniest ones I remember are below the cuts.
In the spirit of detente, Brezhnev and Nixon had become friends. And to show Brezhnev how much he trusted him, Nixon invited him to take an unfettered tour of the Pentagon. So Brezhnev comes to Washington and is taken around the Pentagon by Nixon’s top generals. As the tour is ending, Brezhnev notices a locked red door. “Ah ha,” he exclaims, “what’s this?!”
“Oh, sir, that’s top secret…I’m sorry,” replies the general.
“Nonsense!” says Brezhnev. “Dick said I could see everything.”
“Well, all right,” says the general and opens the door.
In the room there’s nothing but a table. On the table there’s nothing but a red telephone.
“What’s that?” queries Brezhnev.
”That is our direct line to Hell, sir,” the general replies.
Very excited, Brezhnev picks up the phone. “Hello, it’s the Devil!” says a voice on the other end. Brezhnev slams the phone down. “Wonderful! Wow!” he exclaims, very impressed.
“Ah, excuse me sir, that’s $55 for the call,” says the general. Brezhnev is a bit amazed at the high cost, but pays it nonetheless.
Back in Moscow, Brezhnev berates the Politburo. “You idiots, you told me we have everything the Americans have! But do we have a direct line to Hell? No, we do not!”
“Actually, Comrade Brezhnev,” ventures an aide, “we do have a direct line to Hell. You just never asked.”
“Show me at once!”
So Brezhnev goes down to the Soviet Pentagon and is taken through the same red door to the same table with the same red phone. He picks up the phone and hears, “Hello, it’s the Devil!” Upon replacing the receiver, his aide turns to him and says, “That will be two kopeks for the call, Comrade.”
“Why so little?! In Washington I had to pay $55,” exclaims Brezhnev.
“Well you see sir, from Washington it’s a long distance call.”
Q: How many pairs of nice panties do French, American and Soviet woman have?
A: The French woman has five: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. On Wednesday her lover comes and on Saturday she does her husband. The American woman has six: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. She sleeps with her husband on Saturday. The Soviet woman has twelve: January, February, March…
In three weeks, Brezhnev was going to meet with the leader of Communist Poland. As tradition dictated, he wanted to bring an appropriate gift. He thought and thought, and eventually put the question of what to give to the Central Committee. A member of the committee remembered that before the Revolution, Lenin had lived in Poland, so why didn’t they present the Polish leader with a painting of Lenin in Poland? Someone pointed out that the Poles were rather avant-garde and it wouldn’t do to give a boring gift. As they debated, a KGB member stood and said, “Comrade Brezhnev, we’ve recently arrested a Jewish avant-garde painter. He’s very good. Why don’t we commission him?”
“Excellent idea, Comrade. Bring him in.”
So the painter is brought before the Central Committee, given the order and three weeks to execute the work. The day of unveiling arrives and the painter comes before the CC with an enormous canvas. When it’s unveiled, Brezhnev and the CC nearly have heart attacks. There on the canvas, painted in an avant-garde style but still distinct, are a naked woman and a naked man having sex.
“Wha….who is that woman?!” demands Brezhnev.
“That’s Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife,” replies the painter.
“Who’s that man?!”
“That’s Trotsky, Comrade Brezhnev.”
“But…where’s Lenin?!”
“In Poland.”
Brezhnev loved riddles. One day as he was lumbering through the Kremlin, Andropov, who was trying to maneuver his way into position to succeed Brezhnev and thus sucked up a lot, approached him and said, “Comrade Brezhnev, would you like to hear a riddle?”
“Oh,” said Brezhnev, “I’d love to.”
“Who is the son of my father who is not me?”
Brezhnev ponders this a moment and says, “Oh, that’s difficult. I give up.”
“My brother!”
Brezhnev laughs, pats Andropov on the shoulder and continues on his way. As he’s walking, he comes across young Misha Gorbachev bustling along. He comes up alongside him and says, “Misha, would you like to hear a riddle?”
“Yes, all right Comrade.”
“Who is the son of my father who is not me?”
“I don’t know, who?”
“Andropov’s brother!”
One day, Stalin is giving a speech before the Central Committee when someone sneezes. He falls silent, looks around and asks, “Comrades, who sneezed?”
No one raises a hand.
“Comrades, who sneezed?”
No one raises a hand. Stalin motions to one of his many KGB bodyguards and says, “Shoot the first row.” The KGB man mows down the first row and Stalin repeats, “Comrades, who sneezed?” Again, no one raises a hand. Stalin nods to the KGB man, who proceeds to shoot the second row. Stalin looks around the room and says, “Comrades, who sneezed?” Finally, all the way in the back of the room, a guy raises his hand and admits, “Comrade Stalin, I sneezed.” Stalin looks at the man and says, “Bless you, Comrade.”
One day during Khrushchev’s regime, a man is arrested for running naked around the Kremlin yelling, “Khrushchev is an idiot! Khrushchev is an idiot!” He is sentenced to 10 years in the gulag: five for indecent exposure and five for revealing a state secret.
One day, the Party Secretary of a small Siberian city realizes that his city has no statue of Lenin. This obviously will not do, so the man rings up the Lenin Statue Factory and demands the best statue of Lenin they make to be delivered as soon as possible. When the statue arrives swathed in canvas for its unveiling, the Party Secretary can’t help peeking. He notices that poor bald Lenin isn’t wearing a hat! So he calls up the Lenin Statue Factory director and says, “Why isn’t Lenin wearing a hat?! This is Siberia! He must have a hat!”
“But-but-but,” stammers the factory director, but the Party Secretary cuts him off.
“No excuses! Give him a hat and send him back!”
The factory director concedes, gives Lenin a hat and sends him back. When the statue is finally unveiled, there is Lenin with a hat on his head-and one in his hand.
As we know, Nixon and Brezhnev became good friends during détente. One day, they were hanging out in the Kremlin when Nixon turns to Brezhnev and says, “I hear you have a lot of public drunks in Moscow.”
“What! That’s pure capitalist propaganda! There are no drunks in Moscow. To prove it to you, tonight I’ll provide you with a limo, a driver and a Kalashnikov and if you see any drunks, you can shoot them.”
Nixon agrees, and as soon as he leaves, Brezhnev tells the KGB to round up all the drunks in Moscow. That night, Nixon prowls the city for hours in the limo and doesn’t see any drunks. Disappointed, he starts back to the Kremlin when, to his delight, he sees a lone drunk staggering down the street. BLAM!
Three months later, Brezhnev visits Nixon in Washington. He turns to Nixon and says, “I hear you have a lot of drunks in Washington.”
“What! That’s Communist propaganda! We have no drunks in Washington.”
“Fine,” says Brezhnev, “I want the same treatment I gave you.”
So that night, Brezhnev goes driving around Washington cradling an Uzi, looking for drunks. Since Nixon ordered the police to round up all the drunks, he doesn’t see any. Disappointed, he is heading back to the White House when he sees eight drunks staggering down the street. BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM. He shoots them all dead.
The next morning, the headline of the Washington Post is: “Entire staff of Soviet Embassy killed by assassins.”
Up in Heaven, things weren’t going so well. It appeared to St. Peter that God had developed a severe case of depression. He wasn’t attending to his Heavenly duties, and the place was going to, well, Hell. St. Peter was duly concerned and called up Sigmund Freud. For a few days, St. Peter watches as God reclines on Freud’s couch. Finally, he summons Freud and says, “Well? Is it serious?”
“Oh yes,” says Freud, “God has developed huge delusions of grandeur. He thinks he’s Stalin.”
When Lenin died, the Heavenly administration wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. On the one hand, he probably belonged in Hell. However, God knew that Lenin was a great persuader and imagined what great things he could do for the side of religion were he to be converted. So God enlisted St. Peter to convert Lenin. The two sit down on a neighboring cloud and God watches for a few days as the two argue back and forth, shaking fists and gesticulating emphatically. Finally, God can’t take it anymore. He summons St. Peter and asks, “Well, how’s the conversion going?”
St. Peter replies, “Great, Comrade God!”
Brezhnev had to make a trip to India to carry out some negotiations with Indira Ghandi. When he returned, he summoned the Jewish painter and asked him to paint a dot on his forehead. Later, he went before the Central Committee to report on the results of the negotiation. One of the committee members stood up and said, “Excuse me Comrade, but why is there a dot painted on your forehead?”
Brezhnev replied, “Well, when I was in India negotiating with Indira Ghandi, at a critical moment during our discussion, she looked at me and said, ‘Leonid, you’re missing something right here,’ and poked the middle of her forehead.”
One knows how to read, one knows how to write, and the third is there to keep an eye on those dangerous intellectuals.
Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and in socialism it’s the other way around.
Gorbachev had just been chosen as the General Secretary by the Central Committee, but many committee members were not convinced that Gorbachev was the man for the job. Gorbachev knew this. The morning after his election, he threw open the shutters of his Kremlin apartment and saw that the sun was shining, as it often didn’t in Moscow. He smiled and boomed, “Good morning sun!” To his intense astonishment, the sun replied, “A good morning to you too, Comrade Gorbachev, and to the Central Committee that so wisely chose you as their leader!”
Well, Gorbachev’s mouth dropped open. He called Raisa into the room and said, “Look, look! Good morning sun!”
“A good morning to you too, Comrade Gorbachev, and to the Central Committee that so wisely chose you as their leader!” replied the sun.
Raisa’s mouth dropped open too. “Misha,” she said, “you have to call the Central Committee to see this. Then they’ll know they chose the right man.”
So Gorbachev had cars sent to bring every member of the Central Committee to his apartment. By the time they all arrived, the sun was setting. As the committee members gathered around, Gorbachev boomed, “Good morning, sun!”
And the sun replied, “Fuck you, Gorbachev! I’m in the West now!”
In the spirit of detente, Brezhnev and Nixon had become friends. And to show Brezhnev how much he trusted him, Nixon invited him to take an unfettered tour of the Pentagon. So Brezhnev comes to Washington and is taken around the Pentagon by Nixon’s top generals. As the tour is ending, Brezhnev notices a locked red door. “Ah ha,” he exclaims, “what’s this?!”
“Oh, sir, that’s top secret…I’m sorry,” replies the general.
“Nonsense!” says Brezhnev. “Dick said I could see everything.”
“Well, all right,” says the general and opens the door.
In the room there’s nothing but a table. On the table there’s nothing but a red telephone.
“What’s that?” queries Brezhnev.
”That is our direct line to Hell, sir,” the general replies.
Very excited, Brezhnev picks up the phone. “Hello, it’s the Devil!” says a voice on the other end. Brezhnev slams the phone down. “Wonderful! Wow!” he exclaims, very impressed.
“Ah, excuse me sir, that’s $55 for the call,” says the general. Brezhnev is a bit amazed at the high cost, but pays it nonetheless.
Back in Moscow, Brezhnev berates the Politburo. “You idiots, you told me we have everything the Americans have! But do we have a direct line to Hell? No, we do not!”
“Actually, Comrade Brezhnev,” ventures an aide, “we do have a direct line to Hell. You just never asked.”
“Show me at once!”
So Brezhnev goes down to the Soviet Pentagon and is taken through the same red door to the same table with the same red phone. He picks up the phone and hears, “Hello, it’s the Devil!” Upon replacing the receiver, his aide turns to him and says, “That will be two kopeks for the call, Comrade.”
“Why so little?! In Washington I had to pay $55,” exclaims Brezhnev.
“Well you see sir, from Washington it’s a long distance call.”
Q: How many pairs of nice panties do French, American and Soviet woman have?
A: The French woman has five: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. On Wednesday her lover comes and on Saturday she does her husband. The American woman has six: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. She sleeps with her husband on Saturday. The Soviet woman has twelve: January, February, March…
In three weeks, Brezhnev was going to meet with the leader of Communist Poland. As tradition dictated, he wanted to bring an appropriate gift. He thought and thought, and eventually put the question of what to give to the Central Committee. A member of the committee remembered that before the Revolution, Lenin had lived in Poland, so why didn’t they present the Polish leader with a painting of Lenin in Poland? Someone pointed out that the Poles were rather avant-garde and it wouldn’t do to give a boring gift. As they debated, a KGB member stood and said, “Comrade Brezhnev, we’ve recently arrested a Jewish avant-garde painter. He’s very good. Why don’t we commission him?”
“Excellent idea, Comrade. Bring him in.”
So the painter is brought before the Central Committee, given the order and three weeks to execute the work. The day of unveiling arrives and the painter comes before the CC with an enormous canvas. When it’s unveiled, Brezhnev and the CC nearly have heart attacks. There on the canvas, painted in an avant-garde style but still distinct, are a naked woman and a naked man having sex.
“Wha….who is that woman?!” demands Brezhnev.
“That’s Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife,” replies the painter.
“Who’s that man?!”
“That’s Trotsky, Comrade Brezhnev.”
“But…where’s Lenin?!”
“In Poland.”
Brezhnev loved riddles. One day as he was lumbering through the Kremlin, Andropov, who was trying to maneuver his way into position to succeed Brezhnev and thus sucked up a lot, approached him and said, “Comrade Brezhnev, would you like to hear a riddle?”
“Oh,” said Brezhnev, “I’d love to.”
“Who is the son of my father who is not me?”
Brezhnev ponders this a moment and says, “Oh, that’s difficult. I give up.”
“My brother!”
Brezhnev laughs, pats Andropov on the shoulder and continues on his way. As he’s walking, he comes across young Misha Gorbachev bustling along. He comes up alongside him and says, “Misha, would you like to hear a riddle?”
“Yes, all right Comrade.”
“Who is the son of my father who is not me?”
“I don’t know, who?”
“Andropov’s brother!”
One day, Stalin is giving a speech before the Central Committee when someone sneezes. He falls silent, looks around and asks, “Comrades, who sneezed?”
No one raises a hand.
“Comrades, who sneezed?”
No one raises a hand. Stalin motions to one of his many KGB bodyguards and says, “Shoot the first row.” The KGB man mows down the first row and Stalin repeats, “Comrades, who sneezed?” Again, no one raises a hand. Stalin nods to the KGB man, who proceeds to shoot the second row. Stalin looks around the room and says, “Comrades, who sneezed?” Finally, all the way in the back of the room, a guy raises his hand and admits, “Comrade Stalin, I sneezed.” Stalin looks at the man and says, “Bless you, Comrade.”
One day during Khrushchev’s regime, a man is arrested for running naked around the Kremlin yelling, “Khrushchev is an idiot! Khrushchev is an idiot!” He is sentenced to 10 years in the gulag: five for indecent exposure and five for revealing a state secret.
One day, the Party Secretary of a small Siberian city realizes that his city has no statue of Lenin. This obviously will not do, so the man rings up the Lenin Statue Factory and demands the best statue of Lenin they make to be delivered as soon as possible. When the statue arrives swathed in canvas for its unveiling, the Party Secretary can’t help peeking. He notices that poor bald Lenin isn’t wearing a hat! So he calls up the Lenin Statue Factory director and says, “Why isn’t Lenin wearing a hat?! This is Siberia! He must have a hat!”
“But-but-but,” stammers the factory director, but the Party Secretary cuts him off.
“No excuses! Give him a hat and send him back!”
The factory director concedes, gives Lenin a hat and sends him back. When the statue is finally unveiled, there is Lenin with a hat on his head-and one in his hand.
As we know, Nixon and Brezhnev became good friends during détente. One day, they were hanging out in the Kremlin when Nixon turns to Brezhnev and says, “I hear you have a lot of public drunks in Moscow.”
“What! That’s pure capitalist propaganda! There are no drunks in Moscow. To prove it to you, tonight I’ll provide you with a limo, a driver and a Kalashnikov and if you see any drunks, you can shoot them.”
Nixon agrees, and as soon as he leaves, Brezhnev tells the KGB to round up all the drunks in Moscow. That night, Nixon prowls the city for hours in the limo and doesn’t see any drunks. Disappointed, he starts back to the Kremlin when, to his delight, he sees a lone drunk staggering down the street. BLAM!
Three months later, Brezhnev visits Nixon in Washington. He turns to Nixon and says, “I hear you have a lot of drunks in Washington.”
“What! That’s Communist propaganda! We have no drunks in Washington.”
“Fine,” says Brezhnev, “I want the same treatment I gave you.”
So that night, Brezhnev goes driving around Washington cradling an Uzi, looking for drunks. Since Nixon ordered the police to round up all the drunks, he doesn’t see any. Disappointed, he is heading back to the White House when he sees eight drunks staggering down the street. BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM. He shoots them all dead.
The next morning, the headline of the Washington Post is: “Entire staff of Soviet Embassy killed by assassins.”
Up in Heaven, things weren’t going so well. It appeared to St. Peter that God had developed a severe case of depression. He wasn’t attending to his Heavenly duties, and the place was going to, well, Hell. St. Peter was duly concerned and called up Sigmund Freud. For a few days, St. Peter watches as God reclines on Freud’s couch. Finally, he summons Freud and says, “Well? Is it serious?”
“Oh yes,” says Freud, “God has developed huge delusions of grandeur. He thinks he’s Stalin.”
When Lenin died, the Heavenly administration wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. On the one hand, he probably belonged in Hell. However, God knew that Lenin was a great persuader and imagined what great things he could do for the side of religion were he to be converted. So God enlisted St. Peter to convert Lenin. The two sit down on a neighboring cloud and God watches for a few days as the two argue back and forth, shaking fists and gesticulating emphatically. Finally, God can’t take it anymore. He summons St. Peter and asks, “Well, how’s the conversion going?”
St. Peter replies, “Great, Comrade God!”
Brezhnev had to make a trip to India to carry out some negotiations with Indira Ghandi. When he returned, he summoned the Jewish painter and asked him to paint a dot on his forehead. Later, he went before the Central Committee to report on the results of the negotiation. One of the committee members stood up and said, “Excuse me Comrade, but why is there a dot painted on your forehead?”
Brezhnev replied, “Well, when I was in India negotiating with Indira Ghandi, at a critical moment during our discussion, she looked at me and said, ‘Leonid, you’re missing something right here,’ and poked the middle of her forehead.”
One knows how to read, one knows how to write, and the third is there to keep an eye on those dangerous intellectuals.
Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and in socialism it’s the other way around.
Gorbachev had just been chosen as the General Secretary by the Central Committee, but many committee members were not convinced that Gorbachev was the man for the job. Gorbachev knew this. The morning after his election, he threw open the shutters of his Kremlin apartment and saw that the sun was shining, as it often didn’t in Moscow. He smiled and boomed, “Good morning sun!” To his intense astonishment, the sun replied, “A good morning to you too, Comrade Gorbachev, and to the Central Committee that so wisely chose you as their leader!”
Well, Gorbachev’s mouth dropped open. He called Raisa into the room and said, “Look, look! Good morning sun!”
“A good morning to you too, Comrade Gorbachev, and to the Central Committee that so wisely chose you as their leader!” replied the sun.
Raisa’s mouth dropped open too. “Misha,” she said, “you have to call the Central Committee to see this. Then they’ll know they chose the right man.”
So Gorbachev had cars sent to bring every member of the Central Committee to his apartment. By the time they all arrived, the sun was setting. As the committee members gathered around, Gorbachev boomed, “Good morning, sun!”
And the sun replied, “Fuck you, Gorbachev! I’m in the West now!”