Ethnic Jokes in Russia are No Laughing Matter, Moscow Experts Say

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, April 1 – Almost half of the residents of the Russian Federation think that ethnic jokes are something impermissible, according to a new VTsIOM poll (interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=58346). But Moscow scholars say that they can play a positive role in certain circumstances but, of course, not in all.

 

            Anecdotes and ethnic humor, Natalya Shmelyeva of the Moscow Institute of the Russian Language says, can reduce tensions and aggression if they are told “in times of peace.” Stories about Jews, for example, are fine now, but they wouldn’t have been during the Holocaust (nazaccent.ru/content/15425-smeh-s-prichinoj-i-bez.html).

 

            The same thing is true of Russian jokes about Ukrainians and Ukrainian jokes about Russians, she continues. Before the annexation of Crimea, both groups were able to tell them often to the delight of each. But now, that is not the case. Instead, Russian jokes about Ukrainians are often nasty as are those of Ukrainians about Russians.

 

            “But this,” Shmelyeva says, “however paradoxical it may seem, shows the closeness [of the two nations] for the most evil jokes are always about the nearest peoples who speak a similar, albeit distorted language.”

 

            Shmelyeva’s observation is supported by Igor Morozov, a scholar at the Moscow Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, who notes that just as Russians tells jokes about Roma because the latter live among them, so do Mordvins and Udmurts about Maris, and Lithuanians and Ukrainians about Jews and Poles.

 

            According to some Russian scholars in fact, Russians began to tell ethnic jokes in significant numbers at the end of the 19^th century when Jews were able to move out of the pale in significant numbers and settle among them. Given the prominence of humor in Jewish life, Russians in this interpretation began to copy the Jews.

 

            Russians told ethnic jokes about Jews, Ukrainians, Armenians and Chukchis throughout Soviet times, often making fun in these other groups of things that were an exaggeration of what they saw among their own community.  But ethnic humor in Eurasia has not remained unchanged.

 

            The disintegration of the USSR significantly changed it, Moscow experts say. In Soviet times, people in Russian cities saw non-Russians in various professions. Now, because most of the migrants occupy positions on the lower end of the social scale, Russian jokes about them have become far more standardized about these various groups.

 

            For some nations within the Russian Federation, humor about themselves and others occupies a particular niche and are used to establish social hierarchies. For others, such jokes are about promoting fertility. And for many, Moscow scholars say, such stories are used to delineate the limits of the permissible for both insiders and outgroups.