Anecdotes in Russia about Ethnic Groups have Changed Their Targets and Become Far Nastier, Khazgayeva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 5 – Anecdotes about ethnic groups were widespread in Soviet times and remain so, Yuliya Khazagayeva says; but the main targets of such stories have changed and the stories themselves have become far nastier than in the past, so nasty and even racist that they are seldom repeated by outsiders the way analogous anecdotes were before 1991.

            The US-based anti-colonial activist says that one reason such tales remain so widespread is that they are the perfect way to spread stereotypes, including that the Russians were superior, that the non-Russians were their inferiors, and that the non-Russians who are shown in them speak Russian, albeit often poorly (abn.org.ua/en/culture/humiliate-a-non-russian-so-that-a-russian-will-laugh-a-joke-is-a-propaganda-tool/).

            At the end of Soviet times, Khazgayeva continues, an AI study finds that the following nations led as far as being the object of such stories: the Chukchis, the Caucasians, Jews, Ukrainians, Kazan Tatars, and Russians. Now, this list has changed: Russians are in the first place followed by Chechens, Tatars and Bashkirs, Central Asians, and then Jews and Chukchis.

            In Soviet times, jokes in which non-Russians were the subject were of two kinds: those which made fun of those groups and denigrated their members and those in which these nations being outsiders as it were provided the occasion to criticize Soviet society as a whole. Now, the latter have mostly disappeared; and the former have become more dominant.

            With regard to Russians, some anecdotes do make fun or this or that kind of behavior; but most jokes in which Russians and others figure promote the stereotype that Russians are superior and that non-Russians are inferior to them and should not only learn Russian but defer to the Russians in all things.