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In the shadow of the Gulag, Soviet citizens were still cracking jokes. They had to.
Drawing on diaries, interviews, memoirs and hundreds of previously secret documents, It's Only a Joke, Comrade uncovers how they joked, coped, and struggled to adapt in Stalin's brave new world. It asks what it really means to live under a dictatorship: How do people make sense of their lives? How do they talk about it? And whom can they trust to do so?
Moving beyond ideas of 'resistance', 'doublethink', 'speaking Bolshevik', or Stalin's Cult of Personality to explain Soviet life, it reveals how ordinary people found their way and even found themselves in a life lived along the fault-lines between rhetoric and reality.
'An extraordinary achievement' - Ronald Grigor Suny
'Re-vitalizes our understanding of Soviet society' - Lynne Viola
'Fascinating ... lively, engaging, and at times very funny' - Catriona Kelly
'The best book on Stalinism I've read in a long time' - S.A. Smith
'One of those rare books that not only has to be read by scholars in the field, but is also accessible to a wide readership. Indeed it is an essential read for anybody who wants to get beyond standard views of the "communist joke" and understand what humour really tells us about life under this extraordinary regime' - David Priestland
Author: Jamie C. Johnstone, Jonathan Waterlow
ISBN-10: 1985635828
ISBN-13: 9781985635821
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Language: English
Published: 06/13/2018
Pages: 308
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.64d
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