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Laughter under Socialism: Exposing the Ocular in Soviet Jocularity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Serguei Alex. Oushakine
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Extract

What do we need, comrades? We need the broad masses laughing as much as possible. We need laughter so badly, it is enough to make you weep. . . . We need laughter. Thoughtful, serious laughter without the slightest grin.

Nikolai Erdman and Vladimir Mass,A Meeting about Laughter, 1933

Laughter can be different. Yet, such terms as “ours” [nash] and “theirs” [ne nash]—trite as they are—have no difficulty in finding dieir proper coun-terparts. . . . “Our laughter” and “their laughter” are not mere abstractions. The two are separated by a gulf of different social reasoning [propasf raznogo sotsial´nogo osmysleniia].

—Sergei Eisenstein, The Bolsheviks Are Laughing, 1930s

Type
Soviet Jocularity
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , Summer 2011 , pp. 247 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2011

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References

1. Uvarova, Elizaveta, Arkadii Raikin (Moscow, 1986), 128.Google Scholar

2. “Boevoe iskusstvo estrady,” Pravda, 15 December 1960.

3. Raikin's routines and plays are available on several DVDs: My s vamigde-to vstrechalis' (1954), Liudi i manekeny (1974), Volshebnaia sila iskusstva (1970).

4. Raikin, Arkadii, Vospominaniia (St. Petersburg, 1993).Google Scholar

5. For details, see his memoirs, ibid., 410-16.

6. For instance, in 1974, Sergei Mikhalkov, another heavyweight of the officially sanctioned satire, lamented in Pravda about the striking underdevelopment of Soviet comic genres, appealing: “We need films, books, plays, and pamphlets that will ruthlessly ridicule [besposhchadno osmeivaiushchie] everything diat is absurd [nelepoe], alien [chuzhdoe], incompatible with our ideals and the norms of our social morality.” Sergei Mikhalkov, “Dozhivem do ponedel´nika,” Pravda, 23 March 1974.

7. MacFadyen, David, The Sad Comedy ofEl´darRiazanov: An Introduction to Russia's MostPopular Filmmaker (Montreal,2003), 6.Google Scholar

8. See, e.g., Tucker, Janet G., “Introduction,” in Tucker, Janet G., ed., Against the Grain:Parody, Satire, and Intertextuality in Russian Literature (Bloomington, 2002), 15 Google Scholar.

9. Losev, Lev, On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Modern RussianLiterature, trans. obko, Jane (Munich, 1984)Google Scholar. For a detailed discussion, see my essay “The Terrifying Mimicry of Samizdat,” Public Culture 13, no. 2 (2002): 191-214.

10. See, e.g., Tynianov, Iurii N., “Dostoevskii i Gogol’ (k teorii parodii),” Literaturnaiaevoliutsia: Izbrannye trudy (Moscow, 2002), 300-339Google Scholar

11. Derrida, Jacques, “Signature Event Context,” Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, Alan (Chicago, 1982), 320.Google Scholar

12. On Bakhtin and unfinalizability ﹛nezavershennost´), see my essay “Vne nakhodimosti: Bakhtin kak chuzhoe svoe,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 3 (2006): 73-86.

13. Douglas, Mary, Purity andDanger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York, 2002).Google Scholar

14. Zoshchenko, Mikhail, “Osnovnye voprosy nashei professii,” Rasskazy, povesti,fel´etony, teatr, kritika: 1935-1937 (Leningrad, 1937), 379–80Google Scholar. Recollecting a public debate about Soviet satire in 1930, Lilia Brik noted in her diary how critics such as Vladimir Blium insisted that people should write complaints directly to the law enforcement institutions instead of writing satirical stories. Brik, Lilia, Pristrastnye rasskazy (Nizhnii Novgorod, 2003), 197 Google Scholar. See also the coverage of the debate in E. G., “Nuzhna li nam satira? Na dispute v politekhnicheskom muzee,” Literaturnaia gazeta, 13 January 1930.

15. Aleksandrov, Grigorii, Epokha i kino (Moscow, 1976), 165.Google Scholar

16. Eizenshtein, “Bol´sheviki smeiutsia,” 80.

17. See Georgii Malenkov's “Otchetnyi doklad XIX s˝ezda VKP,” Pravda, 6 October 1952, 6. As early as 1925, S. Gusev complained in his article in hvestiia diat “we've yet to find our own Soviet Gogol´s and Saltykovs [-Shchedrins].” S. Gusev, “Predely kritiki,” Izvestiia, 6 May 1927, quoted in Ozmitel´, Evgenii, Sovetskaia satira (Moscow, 1964), 11 Google Scholar. See also la. El´sberg, , Nastedie Gogolia i Shchedrina i sovetskaia satira (Moscow, 1954)Google Scholar.

18. For a good concise review and extensive bibliography, see Ozmitel´, Sovetskaiasatira. See also Gorchakov, N., “Komediia v sovetskom teatre,” Pravda, 19 April 1938, 4; V. Frolov, 0 sovetskoi komedii (Moscow, 1954)Google Scholar; D. Zaslavskii, “O satiricheskikh zhumalakh,“ Pravda, 5 September 1956, 4; Nikolaev, D., “V zashitu spetsifiki satiry,” Voprosy literatury, no. 2 (1961): 47–56 Google Scholar; Eventov, I., “Ostroumie skhvatyvaet protivorechie,” Voprosy literatury, no. 6 (1973): 116–34Google Scholar; Eventov, I., Sila sarkazma: Satira i iumorv tvorchestve Gor'kogo (Leningrad, 1973)Google Scholar.

19. Lunacharskii, Anatolii, “Budem smeiat'sia,” Sobraniesochinenii v vos'mi tomakh (Moscow, 1964), 3:76.Google Scholar

20. For details, see commentaries in ibid., 8:622.

21. Lunacharskii, Anatolii, “O smekhe,” Sobranie sochinenii, 8:533, 534 Google Scholar. See also his “O satire,” ibid., 8:185-87. Eizenshtein, “Bol´sheviki smeiutsia,” 84.

22. Highet, Gilbert, The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton, 1962), 235.Google Scholar

23. Lunacharskii, “O smekhe,” 8:535.

24. Bakhtin, Mikhail, “Satira,” Sobranie sochinenii v semi tomakh (Moscow, 1996), 5:34 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original. Grigorii Aleksandrov, whose aesthetics would be in complete opposition to Bakhtin's, expressed a similar understanding of satire: “Our comedy should not only laugh [at vestiges of the past]. Itshould provide some fun [byt´ veseloi], too. Satire, biting humor, and caricature are weapons against the obsolete [otzhivaiushchii] that prevents us from moving ahead. But merriment and cheerfulness [vesel´e, zhizneradostnost´] are a remarkable means [sredstvo] to affirm the new, a means that that can provoke inspiration in people.” Aleksandrov, Epokha i kino, 205.

25. See, e.g., Bakhtin, Mikhail, “L. E. Pinskii, ‘Dramaturgiia Shekspira. Osnovnye nachala,'” in Bakhtin, , Sobranie sochinenii, 6:441 Google Scholar. For a discussion of the binary “laughing with” versus “laughing at,” see Wood, James, The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel (New York, 2005), 6–7 Google Scholar; see also Highet's Anatomy of Satire for a detailed elaboration of this typology.

26. On “positive” humor, feuilleton, and comedy, see, e.g., I., Eventov, “Smekh— priznak sily,” Voprosy literatury, no. 7 (1962): 33–34 Google Scholar; Zhurbina, Evgeniia, Iskusstvo fel´etona (Moscow, 1965), 62–65 Google Scholar; Frolov, V., “Zametki o komedii,” Pravda, 26January 1952, 2 Google Scholar.

27. For a similar approach, see also Kivelson, Valerie A. and Neuberger, Joan, eds., Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (New Haven, 2008)Google Scholar.

28. See Raikin, Vospominianiia, 325-26; see also Uvarova, Arkadii Raikin, 152.

29. Vsevolod Meierkhol´d, 0 teatre (St. Petersburg, 1913), 45. See also his Agitspektakl´ (1923), in Meierkhol´d, V., Stat'i, pis'ma, rechi, besedy. 1917-1939 (Moscow, 1968), 2:50–52 Google Scholar.

30. Shklovskii, Viktor, “Komicheskoe i tragicheskoe,” Gamburgskii schet (1914-1933) (Moscow, 1990), 113.Google Scholar

31. Tynianov, “Dostoevskii i Gogol´,” 304, 306. For a detailed elaboration of the same approach, see also Eizenshtein, Sergei, “Komicheskoe,” Metod. Grundproblem (Moscow, 2002), 420–31Google Scholar.

32. Raikin was keenly interested in Meyerhold's work; in 1925 the director even invited the young artist to work in his theater. Raikin, Vospominianiia, 114-25.

33. For a useful discussion on visual supplementation, see Rosalind Morris, C., “Photography and the Power of Images in the History of Power: Notes from Thailand,” in Morris, Rosalind C., ed., Photographies East: The Camera and Its Histories in East and South East (Durham, 2009), 134–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.