5 VISITORS: FROM RUSSIA WITH HUMOR, GOOD WILL

A funny thing happened on the way to the Kremlin.

During a National Press Club tour of the Soviet Union in 1985, H.J. Cummings and James Boren, founders (with their wives) of the Workshop Library of World Humor, decided to go off on their own to contact Soviet humorists and find out whether humor could bridge the cultural gap between the United States and the Soviet Union. Through a variety of diplomatic exchanges, they finally arranged to bring five Russians who make their living being funny to the United States, and this week the group visited Southern California.

The five guests are Alexei Pyanov, Vladimir Mochalov, Andrey Benyukh, Valentin Prokhorov and Aramais Saakyan. The first three are, respectively, the editor-in-chief, art director/cartoonist and deputy editor of Krocodil, the Soviet Union’s leading satirical journal (circulation: 5.3 million every 10 days). Prokhorov is a satirical columnist for Pravda. Saakyan, an Armenian, is editor-in-chief of Vozni.

During their brief local stop, which ended Tuesday, Saakyan offered the opinion that Californians in particular had “high-class humor.” Why? “Because there are 250,000 Armenians in California, and your governor is of Armenian descent.”

Benyukh, a pale, slight young man who wore a T-shirt under his jacket that said “The Peter Principle,” was the English-speaking spokesman and translator for the group. The five stayed at the Queen Mary Hotel in Long Beach when not attending symposiums or making the obligatory visit to Disneyland.

The dialogue seemed promising at first. When asked if he was enjoying himself here, he replied, “In America, or the planet Earth?” But soon it became clear that the visit was more a good-will mission than a joke trade. Humor is innately subversive, and everyone was on his good behavior.

The group’s main mission, it appeared, was to dispel the stereotypical categories in which Americans and Soviet citizens hold each other.

“What’s an American stereotype of Russians?” Benyukh asked a reporter.

“You drink vodka for breakfast,” she replied.

“Wrong,” he answered. “We drink Camus cognac.”

“What about us?” she asked.

“We thought Americans had no sense of humor,” he replied. “But we’ve discovered that humor is essential to American life. It’s real. One of my stereotypes is that Americans smoke and drink all the time. We visited an American party at a private home. It was a great surprise to see very few smoking and nobody drinking.”

“Americans are friendly, open,” Pyanov added. “But they don’t invite you into their homes if they don’t know you.”

Asked whether Soviets satirized and laughed at their political leaders the way Americans do, Benyukh said, “If we limit our jokes to presidents, it’d be sad humor.”

“In their political humor, they do not do caricatures,” Boren added, sotto voce. “Their laughter is generally aimed at practices.”

“It’s interesting for us being here,” Benyukh said. “We see things in common. Our humors are similar; they come from people’s aspirations and thoughts. Our countries are looking for ways to get together and understand each other. We’ll go back with less misunderstandings. We’ll see the U.S. through smiling eyes.”

Asked if Soviets indulged in black or gallows humor, such as jokes growing out of the Chernobyl incident, he said: “Alexei went to Chernobyl and wrote about it. But we don’t joke about catastrophe. We didn’t joke about your Challenger. We did not enjoy the tragedy of Americans.”

The meeting adjourned. The Russians gave the attending Americans Krokodil pins and Russian memorabilia as gifts. Boren, who is also president of the International Assn. of Professional Bureaucrats, handed out pencils that had erasers on both ends. The pencils bore the caption “When in doubt, mumble.”