Russia under Putin ‘an Information Dictatorship, Not a Totalitarian State’ and Humor There Reflects That, Arkhipova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – In Russia today, Aleksandra Arkhipova says, “there is an information dictatorship not totalitariansm.” That is, unlike in Stalin’s time, very few Russian residents are repressed because they are members of a particular group and that repressions are carried out randomly with the intention to intimidate rather than incarcerate.

            The Russian anthropologist who now lives and teaches in Paris tells Ilya Azar of the Cherta portal that this difference between 1937 and now along with the fact that people can still leave the country helps to explain both the way Russian humor has changed and the way Moscow officials respond to it (cherta.media/interview/politichesike-anekdoty/).

            Among the most intriguing observations she makes in the course of a long and wide-ranging interview are the following five:

·       The form of anecdotes in Russia has changed. In Soviet times, they were textual and told. Now they often involve pictures with memes and so many, not hearing what they had come to expect, assume there are fewer. That isn’t the case.

·       Anecdotes have changed in other ways as well. Now, there are fewer about Putin or the war and more about daily life and fewer with those featured in them being members of the intellectual elite, like Rabinovich, and more often ordinary people

·       That makes such stories less threatening to the regime, and it also means that the powers that be monitor them less closely. The E Center, for example, focuses almost exclusively on texts rather than on reels and so misses much of the humor now circulating.

·       That means Instagram and video sites are increasingly where Russian humor is located and why portals like anekdot.ru can continue to operate. They feature subjects and people the Putin regime isn’t especially concerned with.

·       After Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine, there were many anecdotes about him and that conflict. Now, there are far fewer, not because Russians have stopped having negative views about both but rather because humor is a way of coping with change. Now, both Putin and the war are the new normal and less often laughed about.