Two Jokes

This is a joke which Gorbachev is supposed to have told a delegation of French politicians who visited Kremlin in the late 1980s.

Gorbachev had arrived late at a meeting looking flustered, and explained that he was sorry but he had been delayed sorting out a problem to do with Soviet agriculture.

"When did the problem arise?", asked a French Senator.

"1917", said Gorbachev.

Good joke, I think.

But it is not a joke that more than 50000 people were put into prison and hundreds executed in Stalinist Soviet for telling jokes such as these.

And another joke, a black one.

In 1969, the Czechoslovakian writer Jan Kalina put out a book of anti-communist jokes, "1001 Jokes". It infuriated the Czech authorities so much, they put listening devices in his room.

After a year, they had enough evidence to charge him with slandering the state.

During the hearing, when the issue of bugging came up, the Czechs did not want to lose their high moral ground. Instead, they claimed that the taps had been placed in Kalina's home by Western Secret Agents.

Jan Kalina, rather drily, responded, "I never told that joke".