--- "John E. Norem" <jnorem at cox.net> wrote:
> The Sunday Times review by Christopher Hart
>
> This marvellously original new study of the collapse
> of the Soviet bloc
> began as an article on communist jokes in Prospect
> magazine. Ben Lewis's
> thesis is not simply that jokes alleviated the
> sufferings of those who
> lived under Soviet communism during those long, grey
> decades, but that
> by constantly depicting communism as ludicrous and
> unworkable, they
> ultimately - along with numerous other factors, of
> course - helped bring
> about its collapse.
>
[WS:] The jokes are funny, but Hart misses the point entirely when he contrasts the Soviet situation with Nazi Germany on the grounds that it was deterimental to human happiness. Jokes thrive in a climate where people question their superiors yet feel relatively safe from retribution. If one or the other does not obtain, jokes are scarce - either because people do not feel like ridiculing their superiors or are afraid of doing so.
BTW, one of the bigest suprprises I experienced after getting off the boat was to discover that many if not most Americans live in fear - fear of people different than themselves, fear of crime, fear of losing their job, status, fear of being poor, etc. Back in the old country, people had more cavalier attitudes and were remarkably free of fear, as far as I remember. People would joke in situations in which most Americans would be scared.
I am not sure if that was also true of other EE countries, like Russia or Romania. Chris? Joanna?
Wojtek