State Laughter

Reviews / Votes

Broadly interdisciplinary and replete with nuanced insights into Stalin-era comedic practices, discourses, and genres, Dobrenko and Jonsson-Skradol's gripping volume offers new perspectives on humor under totalitarianism. This empirically-rich, theoretically-informed, and carefully documented study is bound to appeal to a wide range of scholars and students of Soviet history, literature, and culture. * Olga Mesropova, Russian Review * This book opens up new ways of examining Soviet culture by moving away from reductive narratives in which Soviet jokes always belonged to dissidents' efforts to resist Stalinist totalitarianism. The emphasis on state-sanctioned laughter in Stalinist culture contributes not only to cultural studies of laughter in general but also benefits the understanding of Soviet culture and Soviet subjectivity in general. Most importantly, the methodology developed in this book could further inspire scholars studying cultures and politics of other communist states to explore the formation and transformation of the comic in official narratives. * Yejun Zou, Europe-Asia Studies * This new volume is the first to offer a comprehensive exploration of how Stalin's regime understood, attempted to control, and ultimately wielded humour as a (usually blunt-force) tool to engineer utopia. The authors (Dobrenko,Skradol) place their study in direct opposition to the two principal claims that long permeated both emigre accounts and the historiography. * Jonathan Waterlow, Modern Language Review * State Laughter should be considered a must-read for anyone interested in Soviet mass culture under Stalin. * David Brandenberger, Ab Imperio * This rich volume is certain to be of interest to students and scholars of Stalinist culture and its chronological successors, as well as more broadly to those with an interest in satire and other varieties of the comic in authoritarian states. * Seth Graham, Slavonic and East European Review *