Laughing for the State : The Amateur Rural Comedy Brigades in the Vaslui County of Communist Romania in the 1970s and 1980s
Abstract
Russian born and University of California, Berkley bred cultural anthropologist Alexei Yurchak posits that humor in the form of jokes (anekdoty) eventually aided in undermining the Soviet Union hegemonic power. As he puts it, uttering jokes "became a ubiquitous part of daily conversations; and it became a custom to tell anekdoty during all cigarette breaks at the university".
Thus, the folkloric genre of anekdoty became, according to Yurchak, a "new form of art" that fostered a collective ritual of "reeling out" until as late as the 1980s. By the same token, Siniavskii points out that the "ritual became common in all Soviet republics and socialist countries of Eastern Europe during this period".
Romania was no exception. Every informal meeting, family reunion or dinner with friends ended up with a session of jokes (political or otherwise).