Popular Soviet (and not only) jokes that are actually several centuries old

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Some jokes are considered classic Soviet, others are classic Hollywood. And those who are accustomed to hearing them from childhood will probably be surprised at how old these jokes really are. It is very interesting how they looked before and how they have changed over time.

Ancient Greeks, Spartans and sages

The objects of jokes among the ancient Greeks were often two categories: the Spartans and the learned sages. In the case of the Spartans, their frugality was often ridiculed. For example, the Greeks claimed that Spartans grow beards because it is free. Reminds me of a Soviet joke about why Jews have such big noses, right?

As for the wise men, the jokes with their participation are reminiscent of Soviet jokes about intellectuals and officials discouraged by a collision with real life. For example, there was an anecdote about a sage who decided to wean a donkey from eating. And he almost managed to do it, slowly reducing the portion of grass - but when the sage reached one blade of grass, the donkey suddenly died. It is not difficult to recall an anecdote from tsarist times, where a gypsy was doing the same with a horse, and a Soviet one about a Soviet scientist who almost succeeded in gradually transferring one hard worker to the power of sunlight (air, Lenin's works - there are different options), but that, unfortunately, died before the experiment could be completed.

Jokes about outright simpletons were also popular. In Soviet times, they turned into anecdotes about women, Chukchi and collective farmers - it was these categories of people who were appointed by Soviet folklore to play the role of simpletons. So, in an ancient Greek anecdote, a son comes to the embalmers to pick up the processed body of his father, and they ask - in order to find him among other bodies - what special signs he had. The son replies: "He coughed all the time." In Soviet times, a widow came behind the body and pointed out stuttering as special signs. However, the assessment of the heroine of the anecdotes is often softened - she is presented as lost from grief, and the anecdote turns into a story of the category “both laughter and sin”. The Greeks were more ruthless and never made such reservations, but ancient Greek motives can be found not only in Soviet anecdotes. Everyone knows the popular vulgar joke from American films: "Is that a gun in your pocket or are you so glad to see me?" For the first time it sounded in the ancient Greek comedy "Lysistratus", only instead of a pistol they mentioned a spear under a cloak.

By the way, the popular answer to the question "How (to do something)?" - "Silence!" also goes back to an ancient Greek anecdote. According to him, the barber had to update the hairstyle of one unsociable tyrant (ruler). When the barber politely asked how to cut him, the client only replied, "Silently."

Khoja Nasreddin as a signal that it's time to laugh

Khoja Nasreddin is a popular character in jokes of the Turkic-speaking peoples, from the Chinese Uighurs to the Balkan Turks. Tales of his adventures have been circulating since the thirteenth century. It is interesting that in some of these stories Khoja Nasreddin appears as an amazingly cunning and wise man, while in others he turns out to be an incredible simpleton. Probably, the mention of Khoja Nasreddin could only serve as a marker that the story told will be funny and has little to do with reality.

In one of these stories, Nasruddin was looking for something in the dust at the door to his house. Passers-by asked what he was looking for. “Ring,” was their answer."But where did you drop it exactly?" - "In the house" - "So why aren't you looking in the house?" “It's dark there, but light here. It's easier to search here! " In Soviet times, the same anecdote was told about a drunkard who searches for dropped keys at night under a lamp. The props have changed, but the plot remains the same.

The problem of bureaucracy is older than it seems

The phrase "Prove that you are not a camel" is usually considered a quote from the Soviet humorous dialogue dedicated to the native bureaucracy. However, the dialogue was made on the basis of an anecdote from Stalin's times, in which animals, having heard that the NKVD would arrest camels, scatter in all directions. They may not be camels, but prove it after your arrest!

However, for the first time the phrase was recorded in writing in a collection of stories from the Persian poet Saadi, "Gulistan", in the thirteenth century. In one of the stories, the fox is terrified because the camels are taken forcibly to work. To the objection that she is not a camel, she replies that if envious people point to her as a camel, she will die before she proves otherwise. Once in Europe, the anecdote acquires a piquancy: foxes are masculine in many European languages, and a typical male fear is introduced into the anecdote - in the European version, camels are caught to bachelor.

But this story also has a prototype plot, only without the camels. In an even older version for forced labor, people catch donkeys, and the fox is in a panic, because people are unable to distinguish a donkey from a fox - especially, which is clear from the context when they are in a hurry to fulfill the king's order.

Some jokes changed props, but not geography

In the collection of Russian folklore from Afanasyev, you can find a joke:

“At night, a knock on the window: - Hey, owners! Do you need firewood? - No! What kind of firewood at night ?! Wake up in the morning - no firewood."

Already in the nineties of the twentieth century, firewood in the anecdote was replaced by car tires.

Anecdotes truly tell about the era in which they are popular, much more than other books. You understand this when you know what the citizens of the Third Reich were joking about: Jewish jokes, opposition jokes and permitted humor.

Text: Lilith Mazikina.