Russian Humour: Difference between revisions

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- Whew! We've beaten them back!|Good, Petka. Now, put the grenades back to the shelf.}}
 
* Lieutenant Rzhevsky, a Hussar from the popular movie ''[[Hussar Ballad]]''. He is renowned for being a womanizer, telling lewd jokes and dropping [[Cluster F-Bomb|Cluster F Bombs]] in a [[Sophisticated As Hell]] manner. By some weird reason (maybe for sheer contrast), these jokes usually depict him interacting with characters from [[War and Peace]] such as Natasha Rostove or Pierre Bezukhov. The humor in these jokes comes from the futile attempts of this trash-talking, tit-grabbing [[Boisterous Bruiser]] to pass as an [[Officer and Aa Gentleman]] and fit into the polite, sophisticated noble society.
{{quote| "Yesterday I saved a lady from a rape..."<br />
"Oh, it's so interesting, Lieutenant, tell me how you did it!"<br />
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** The teacher asks the class to produce a word that starts with the letter "A"; Vovochka happily raises his hand and says "Asshole!" The teacher, shocked, responds "For shame! There's no such word!" "That's strange," says Vovochka, "the asshole exists, but the word doesn't!"
 
* [[Sherlock Holmes]] and Dr. Watson, mostly based upon their portrayal by Vasiliy Livanov and Vitaly Solomin in [[The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (TV)|the 1980s Soviet film adaptation]] of Conan Doyle's works. The content is similar to Stirlitz jokes above, only less centered on puns and more on Holmes' improbable ingenuity in deduction, and Watson acting as [[Straight Man]]. Another prominent theme is making fun of [[Victorian Britain]] stereotypes, especially porridge, which is believed to be the primary food of a [[Quintessential British Gentleman]].
{{quote| '''Watson''': Holmes, what is this terrible howling? Is this the Hound of Baskervilles?<br />
'''Holmes''': No, Watson... It's Sir Henry, they're trying to make him eat porridge again. }}
 
* "New Russians", the ''[[Nouveau Riche|nouveau riche]] [[Gratuitous French|a la Russe]]''. The stereotype of arrogant and poorly educated post-Perestroika businessmen and gangsters, who seized enormous wealth in [[The Nineties]] and were driving around in Mercedes cars and expensive suits, but have no idea what "style" is, only price. Typical plots involve them interacting among each other, bragging about their ill-gotten wealth, or with normal, poor but well-educated people. Or they are rammed by the [[Arch Enemy]] of a Mercedes, an old ugly [[The Alleged Car|Zaporozhets]].
{{quote| A Mercedes Benz stops at a traffic light. Suddenly, a Zaporozhets comes from behind and collides with it. Five thugs get out of the Mercedes and drag the driver of the Zaporozhets out. 'Okay, dude, we see now that you don't have any money, so we'll just beat the crap out of you for trashing our car,' they say. The man looks at them and says: 'Wait, boys, isn't it unfair for five people to attack one?' The thugs get together and discuss this for a little, then return to him and say: 'You are right, it is unfair. Here, Kolya and Vova will fight on your side.'"}}
** A sheer chaos when anything could turn in any way was another source of jokes.
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'''New Russian''': Well he's kind of a loser, but he is honest and I really like how he calls me. }}
 
* Animals. These jokes are based around animal behavior stereotypes, which have their roots in [[Russian Mythology and Tales]]: the [[Big Badass Wolf|violent Wolf]], the sneaky (female) Fox, the cocky coward Hare, the strong, simple-minded Bear, and the king of animal kingdom Lion. The Hedgehog is a complex case, since he is basically the all-round Russian [[Everything's Better Withwith Penguins|penguin]].
** Also a cockerel or rooster, however jokes featuring a cockerel only really work if you know from the start of the joke he's supposed to be a closet homosexual: these jokes made more sense back when the Soviet Union criminalised homosexuality and have been dying out since the 90’s. This comes from ''petukh'' (cockerel) being a [[Russian Language|Fenya]] term for a passive homosexual. A typical story would be the Wolf, the hare and a cockerel in a holding cell awaiting trial and telling each other what they are in there for: the Wolf will go on a long story about he started a fight and beat someone up, but that they deserved it and he doesn’t deserve to be there, the hare will tell an equally long tale where he will come over as a cocky but cowardly thief, black-marketer or conman but that he doesn’t deserve to be there because he’s not really done anything that wrong, and the cockerel will listen to both of their long and complicated stories and then just say “Me, oh. I’m a political prisoner: I pecked [name of unpopular local bigwig/ “Young pioneer”/ “Soviet new man”] in the Arse.”
* The Golden Fish is the Russian equivalent of a [[Genie in Aa Bottle]] (with whom it is interchangeable), first appearing in a poem by [[Alexander Pushkin (Creator)|Alexander Pushkin]]. The story usually revolves around a person finding/catching a Golden Fish and being granted three wishes, after which [[Hilarity Ensues]]. Sometimes, three people are granted one wish each.
** "Three men, stranded on an island, catch the Golden Fish and are granted one wish each. The first one says: 'I want to go home,' and disappears. The second one says: 'I want to go home, too,' and also disappears. The third one says: 'I'm alone. I want a bottle of vodka and those two to come back here.'"
*** The joke is lost on non-Russians and even some modern Russians, but in the Soviet times three was considered the optimal number of people for collective drinking. The reason for that was that the price of a bottle of vodka was 2 roubles 87 kopecks, so if each person contributed a rouble they could buy a bottle and 13 kopecks' worth of snacks.
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* Man, his wife and her lover - very popular story pattern. Almost always begins with "Man came home after business trip and his wife is with a lover". [[Hilarity Ensues]]. In this plot lover may try to hide in a wardrobe or under the bed, escape from the apartment or convince husband that he is not a lover.
** A man came home after a business trip. The same day in the middle of the night a naked man with a knife jumps out of the wardrobe and shouts: "I am fugitive criminal Ivanov!" and then run through the door. A few second after that another naked man jumps out of wardrobe and shouts "I am police detective Petrov, have you seen where fugitive criminal Ivanov gone?" The confused husband gestured to the door. "Thank you, citizen, SWAT team, follow me!"
* Political/historical "anecdotes", a venerable genre that descended from anecdotes in the classical sense and was already quite popular in the early 19th century ([[PushkinAlexander (Creator)Pushkin|Pushkin]] was pretty fond of them). Those are mostly jokes about Russian (and later Soviet, and now Russian again) rulers, revolving around their most famous achievements and facts related to them mentioned in history textbooks, famous quotes (such as Lenin's "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country!", often treated as a mathematical formula that can therefore also be written as "Soviet power is communism minus electricity" and so on), other phrases commonly associated with them (like Peter the Great's "cutting a window into Europe") and various "characteristic traits", like Stalin's arbitrary trigger-happiness, Lenin's and Stalin's funny accents, Brezhnev's senility and Yeltsin's alcoholism. Stalin jokes seem particularly popular no matter what, though, probably because he fits the archetype of the smug, whimsical, unrestrained tyrant so very well and also happens to overlap with ethnic jokes about Georgians:
{{quote| '''NKVD major:''' "We arrested this man for treason!"<br />
'''Stalin (with an untranslatable thick Georgian accent):''' "What did he do?"<br />