Laughing through the darkness

Russian dictator Joseph Stalin died over 70 years ago, but the jokes involving him live on.

- ANITA PRATAP

Especially the ones he never told. He did say “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”, and “people who cast votes decide nothing; people who count the votes decide everything.” But most Stalin jokes are apocryphal. They are attributed to him because he could have said them, though there is no evidence that he did.

But, mostly, Soviet citizens secretly invented Stalin jokes: often at personal peril. A popular one, that survives decades, goes: a worker stands in a queue for bread for hours. He finally says, “I’ve had enough. I’m going to Moscow to shoot Stalin.” Hours later he rejoins the queue. “What happened?” people ask. “The queue to shoot Stalin is even longer,” he says. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev recalled, “Even in the most desperate times, the jokes saved us.”