понедельник, 19 декабря 2011
На меня неожиданно обрушился шквал емайлов от бельгийца, живущего в Англии. Психотерапевт. Может мне начать беспокоиться?
Не одной мне страдать? Мои извинения тем, кто не говорит по-английски.
Khruschev is joking around with some collective-farm workers.
‘Hey, how’s life?’ he jokes.
‘Life’s great!’ they joke back.
***
Khrushchev is denouncing the cult of personality.
‘Atrocious crimes took place under Comrade Stalin,’ he says. ‘Many innocent people suffered. There were terrible breaches of socialist legality.’
‘And where were you when this was going on?’ comes a voice from the back.
‘Who said that?’ snaps Khrushchev. Dead silence. You could hear a pin drop.
Khrushchev nods. ‘That’s where I was,’ he says.
***
Q: What do you call a queue?
A: The socialist approach to a till.
***
Q: What do you call Khrushchev’s hairdo?
A: Harvest of 1963.
***
Yuri Gagarin’s daughter answers the phone. ‘No, mummy and daddy are out,’ she says. ‘Daddy’s orbiting the earth, and he’ll be back tonight at 7 o’clock. But mummy’s gone shopping for groceries, so who knows when she’ll be home.’
***
A flying saucer swoops down over the earth and grabs a Russian, a German, and a Frenchman. The aliens give all three abductees a pair of shining steel spheres, and lock them in tiny compartments aboard the spaceship. They’ll release the one who can think of the most amazing thing to do with the spheres, they say. The German juggles with his spheres: not bad. But the Frenchmen juggles with them while standing on his head and singing a beautiful love song. Surely he must be the winner – ‘but we’ll just check what the Russian can do’, say the aliens. In a moment, they’re back. ‘Sorry, but the Russian wins.’ ‘In God’s name, how?’ says the Frenchman. ‘What else could he possibly have come up with?’ ‘Well,’ say the aliens in awe, ‘he broke one, and lost the other…’
***
Brezhnev is entering the third hour of his speech to the Party Congress, when the comrades from the organs of security suddenly swoop and arrest a group of American spies in the audience. ‘Brilliant work!’ says Brezhnev. ‘But how did you pick them out?’ ‘Well,’ say the KGB men modestly, ‘as you yourself have observed, Comrade General Secretary, the enemy never sleeps...’
***
Did you hear about the crocodile that ate Brezhnev? Yes, the poor thing has been shitting medals for a fortnight.
***
Q: What do you call a question-mark?
A: An exclamation-mark in middle age.
***
German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, French President Giscard D’Estaing, and Brezhnev are showing off their favourite trinkets. Schmidt shows off a snuff box with an inscription reading ‘To dear Helmut, from your loving wife.’ Giscard D’Estaing has a pipe that reads, ‘To dear Giscard, from a patriotic Frenchwoman.’ Brezhnev pulls out a gold cigarette box encrusted with diamonds, which says ‘To Count Uvarov from Grand Prince Sergei Aleksandrovich’.
***
Brezhnev is showing his mother how well he’s done. He shows her his suite in the Kremlin, his dacha in the country, his Black Sea villa, his Zil limousine.
‘All very nice, dear,’ she says. ‘But what will you do if the Bolsheviks come back?’
Q: Can one build socialism in one country?
A: Certainly, provided you make sure you live in another one.
Q: Can one build socialism in the Sahara?
A: Certainly, but you will have to plan for a shortage of sand within 3 months.
Q: Can one build socialism in Monaco?
A: Certainly, but what is the point of inflicting such a gigantic catastrophe on such a small country?
Q: If capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, what is socialism?
A: The exact opposite.
Q: If capitalism is standing on the edge of the abyss, where does that leave socialism?
A: Several strides ahead.
Beria and Stalin were discussing the problems building socialism in Poland after the war ...
Beria: These Poles, Joseph Vissarionovich, are they our brothers or our comrades?
Stalin: Alas, Lavrentiy Pavlovich, they are our brothers. One can always choose one's comrades ...
Molotov and Beria were discussing a present for Stalin's birthday ...
Molotov: What shall we get for Stalin's birthday, Lavrenti Pavlovich?
Beria: How about a book, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich?
Molotov: But tovarich, he already has a book!
No laughing matter - such jokes sometimes merited the 'supreme punishment' in the days of real socialism ...
@темы:
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