‘Did You Hear the One About the Soviet . . .?’

The Soviets have bombed in Washington.

“OK, you wanted to hear a Russian joke, so here’s a Russian joke,” a Soviet translator says, playing to a crowd of journalists. “Two party ministers are riding on a street car.”

Dead silence.

“That’s it, that’s the joke,” the frustrated Soviet explains to the bewildered group. “Whoever heard of two ministers riding on a street car?”

The scene foreshadowed the difficult road ahead for five Soviet humorists touring the United States as part of the first cultural exchange of humor between the superpowers.

The two-week traveling “humor summit,” sponsored by the nonprofit Workshop Library on World Humor, arrives today at the 6th International Conference on Humor at Arizona State University and will go on to Southern California next week. In return, a U.S. delegation of humorists will visit the Soviet Union next year.

Alexei S. Pyanov, editor-in-chief of Krokodil, a 5.5-million circulation Soviet humor magazine, heads the Soviet delegation. Pyanov said that the visit will allow Americans to “see our country through the eyes of a joyful person, a humorist.”

“It is important to talk truth with each other,” Pyanov said. “It’s much better if we talk truth to each other with a smile, with laughter.”

“It’s better to exchange humorists than bombs,” added Jim Boren, a satirist who organized the tour with private funding. “You can’t fight when you’re laughing.”

There are two kinds of Soviet humor, Pyanov said. One is a literary form that appears in the nation’s 24 humor magazines, the other is “anecdotal” humor heard on the streets. Pyanov says that the latter is funny for only a short time and better when told orally instead of in print. The street car joke is an example of this, its U.S. reception notwithstanding.

Pyanov credited Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s national campaign of glasnost, or openness, for allowing the Soviet visit. He also credited Gorbachev for loosening internal cultural restraints on humor.

“Today, in the atmosphere that exists, we as satirists and humorists are enjoying our work much greater,” he said, adding that jokes about Gorbachev most often deal with the bureaucratic difficulties of implementing his glasnost programs.

After the Arizona conference, the delegation will visit UCLA on Sunday and Cal State Long Beach on Monday.