Soviet and U.S. Panelists Trade Gags in Parley on Trends in Humor

What’s in: bureaucrats, punks, pollution, stone-washed jeans, Stalin. What’s out: Gorby, glasnost, Americans.

What’s fair game for roasting nowadays in the Soviet Union was the hot topic last week at a symposium aimed at assessing the state of the wit in the two countries and how humor reflects social and cultural values.

“This is one more step in demystifying the ‘Evil Empire,” said American stand-up comedian Paul Krassner, who sat on a discussion panel last Wednesday at Antioch University Southern California in Marina del Rey. Also on the panel were American professors of humor and visiting Soviet humor magazine editors.

2-Day Visit

The Soviet editors stopped on the Westside for two days as part of the Second Soviet/American Exchange of Humorists. The traveling humor summit, which also ventured to Virginia, Nebraska and New York state in its two weeks, was sponsored by the semi-satirical International Assn. of Professional Bureaucrats, a Washington-based organization that, according to its president, Jim Boren, is dedicated to dynamic inaction. The exchange was to continue Thursday night at UCLA with another panel featuring George Carlin. Next year, Americans will head to the Soviet Union.

The first such round of visits, in 1987 and 1988, included Americans Art Buchwald and Jim Berry.

Political satire is the primary form of humor in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet delegation reflected that. Represented were three official publications that conferees likened to National Lampoon and England’s Punch and Private Eye.

Moscow-based Krokodil (crocodile), the largest humor magazine in the Soviet Union, is published every 10 days; its circulation is 5.3 million, out of the country’s 287 million people. Editor Leonid Florentiev said the magazine, like its namesake, “bites, as a humor magazine should.”

The two other magazines have equally pointed names: Peretz (pepper), from the Ukraine, and Pikker (a lance), from Estonia.

Glasnost, or openness, has affected almost everything in Soviet life including what gets a laugh, said Florentiev, at 35 among the youngest of Krokodil’s 16 editors. Florentiev said censorship exists only “inside our editors in chief, . . . and that decides whether the magazine is brave or not brave.” But, he said, “Your psychology cannot change overnight.”

Current targets for roasting include individual politicians--dead and alive--and the Communist Party, the visitors said, and their magazines snipe at certain ministers for incompetence and the Central Committee for its posh headquarters.

The Soviet government’s penchant for secrecy provides fodder as well. One joke making the rounds recently has former Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko asking Leonid Brezhnev, “What do we do about these foreign correspondents, who lie about us?”

Brezhnev replies: “If they’re lies, they’re OK. But if they start speaking the truth, get them out of the country in 24 hours.”

Fertile Fields

Satirists also fire at corruption, vice, alcoholism, crime and environmental problems as well as the black market, Florentiev says.

A recent Krokodil cartoon shows devils stirring a vat of stone-washed jeans, the latest craze in the Soviet Union. Harvey Mindess, an Antioch professor of psychology of humor who coordinated the visitors’ Westside stay, said he sees a difference in what gets a laugh among Soviets just since the last conference two years ago. Discussing Playboy’s bawdy humor, for example at that time made the Soviet delegation uneasy. This time, they roared. And Kaido Liiva, editor-in-chief of Pikker, showed some risque cartoons from his own magazine.

These Soviet humorists--except for editor Andrey Benyukh--were not the same delegates that attended two years ago. According to Krassner, even the body language this time was looser. “They kept whispering to each other the last time, to make sure they were following party line,” he said.

As in America, the Soviets have some old standards.

An old woman is sitting on a Moscow street corner, with an empty shopping bag. “I’ve become so old, I don’t remember--did I go to the store, or am I going to the store?” Benyukh, Krokodil deputy foreign editor, said the joke is decades old but “now the (shortage) situation is so bad, that (it) is up to date.”

Underground jokes have sprouted above ground. Liiva told of the emigrating Soviet waiting at the airport. As he waits for his flight, he hears an announcement: “The party delegation is leaving for abroad.” A bit later, there’s another announcement: “The delegation from the Youth Communist League is leaving.” The man waits some more; the next announcement is, “The trade union delegation is leaving.” The man turns to another would-be emigre and says, “Now it makes sense to stay here.”

Range of Topics

Recent Krokodil issues show the range of humor in Russia: everything from cartoons to poetry to articles, poking fun at aging politicians, the Soviet drug problem, rock music, artists and liubers, gangs of hooligans from the suburbs who beat up Muscovites.

A punker has a scrub-brush for a Mohawk. A long-haired hippie with beads and a peace-sign chain meditates--picturing a cooked chicken. There’s even a Gary Larson cartoon of two fleas on a dog’s back, checking a map of the dog that tells them, “You are here.”

Glasnost has made some humor passe. Benyukh gave as an example the tale about three Russians sitting on a park bench. The first one sighs; the second one says, ‘Oh,” and the third says: “Are you crazy? You have to really be more careful in expressing your political views.”

Anti-Western attacks have stopped, Florentiev says. “Our readers are pretty fed up with that kind of stuff,” he said, adding that if the magazine wants to take stabs at the West, it now uses American cartoons for that. Ethnic jokes are out, because of the y situation with the various nationalities in the Soviet Union that have increased their calls for autonomy, he said.

The editors say their job has become more difficult in some ways because under glasnost, newspapers also are doing satire. “The competition is much greater than we had before,” Florentiev said. Before, the humor magazines stood alone, and “it was easy to be on top of the interests of the audience. Now, everybody seems to be very sharp,” he said.

Glasnost- era humor does have its sacred cows, however, among them glasnost itself. “I don’t feel any euphoria about the situation,” Florentiev said. “We’ve got a long way to go before we consider ourselves a real democracy. But the change is dramatic, and Mikhail Gorbachev has done a great job. “ He added that the parliament is considering a draft law that would increase freedom of speech, and he thinks it will pass.

Attacking glasnost, therefore, would be suicidal, he said. “If we attack glasnost and perestroika, it can be used by the conservatives to undermine Gorbachev’s influence.”

Likewise, Gorbachev has been spared, though even that is changing. Benyukh related this one-liner: Gorbachev was just a party leader before, but now is a party leader and president--”because he understood the impossibility of surviving on one salary in our country.”

Gags With National Flavor

Panelists exchanged jokes about each other’s countries. They generally hit the other country’s funny bone, but some missed. Such as an obscure Soviet story about Brezhnev and poet Alexander Pushkin. And an American joke about various groups of Soviet citizens waiting for a share of a phantom shipment of oranges. The visitors politely laughed but later said it was only “so-so.”

Stand-up comics of the American sort are not found in the Soviet Union, said the Soviet humorists. Instead, satirical writers read their work--and fill 1,000-seat auditoriums, earning 5,000 rubles (about $8,000 on the official exchange in the devalued Soviet economy, $500 on the black market) a performance, according to the Soviet humorists.

And as for movies and television comedies, Florentiev says, “watching the Soviet parliament in session on TV is enough humor.”

American comedians known in their country, the Russians said, include Billy Crystal (whose recent visit to Moscow was a success, they said), Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby and Art Buchwald (whose articles have run in Pikker and Krokodil). Woody Allen has God-like status: “It would be interesting to get to know Woody Allen--we know very little about him,” said Liiva. Allen is “much more intellectual than other humorists,” Benyukh said.

Copies of National Lampoon and Mad magazine are as rare in the Soviet Union as Krokodil, Pikker and Peretz are in America. Benyukh said Krokodil editors do subscribe to Time and USA Today--and to Readers Digest. “(Readers Digest) used to be Reagan’s favorite--we’re interested in what he finds humorous,” he said with a grin.

The delegation found plenty to laugh at in America. A tour of a jail in Alexandria, Va., prompted Florentiev’s observation that “maybe we have worse prisons, but we have many more.” Benyukh was particularly tickled by Zsa Zsa Gabor on trial for slapping a Beverly Hills cop.

And in the true spirit of glasnost, Benyukh came supplied with a joke that he insisted was Moscow-born:

A Moscow man gets home at 6 a.m., after a long night at work and several drinks. He’s drunk; he dreads going home because his wife will chew him out, and he’s tired of his life of drudgery. Then a strange thing happens. A white Mercedes-Benz pulls up, and a gentleman in a white suit asks him, “Hey, guy, where’s the nearest striptease, with drinks and with gambling?” The Muscovite answers: “In L.A.”