State Laughter by Evgeny Dobrenko, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Stalin's reign of terror was not all doom and gloom, much of it was (meant to be) funny! From comedy films to satirical theatre, from caricature to court speeches, and from Stalin's own writings to bawdy folk songs, humour pervaded the popular culture of the USSR. Until now, conventionalwisdom has held that humour was a hallmark of the subversive, but in State Laughter Dobrenko and Jonsson-Skradol do away with that notion. Instead, tracing the development of official humour, satire, and comedy from the revolution through to the 1950s, they explore how and why laughter was a corecomponent of the survival of the Soviet regime. Grounded in Soviet intellectual and cultural history, State Laughter offers the first comprehensive analysis of state-sponsored popular culture in Stalin's Soviet Union. | State Laughter by Evgeny Dobrenko, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters