Forbidden Laughter

Soviet Underground Jokes




Forbidden Laughter
Soviet Underground Jokes

by Emil Draitser
©1980
94 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace
(January 12, 2014 edition)

ISBN-10: 1494472554
ISBN-13: 978-1494472559



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The first bilingual (English/Russian) sampling of authentic Soviet underground jokes - mostly political, but also ethnic, and at times erotic - published in the United States at the height of the Cold War. As the title page has it, these jokes were "collected and smuggled across the Soviet border in a false-bottomed box (known as "a skull"), recorded by Emil Draitser, illustrated in the best tradition of Socialist realism by Igor, translated from the language of Pushkin to the language of Shakespeare by Jon Pariser, and published without the consent of Soviet censors.
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Feature Story:

from The New York Times, 02/08/1980
from The Washington Post, 04/09/1980
from Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 02/26/1980  
 
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