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A Cultural Analysis of the Russo-Soviet Anekdot A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSO-SOVIET ANEKDOT by Seth Benedict Graham BA, University of Texas, 1990 MA, University of Texas, 1994 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2003 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Seth Benedict Graham It was defended on September 8, 2003 and approved by Helena Goscilo Mark Lipovetsky Colin MacCabe Vladimir Padunov Nancy Condee Dissertation Director ii Copyright by Seth Graham 2003 iii A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSO-SOVIET ANEKDOT Seth Benedict Graham, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2003 This is a study of the cultural significance and generic specificity of the Russo-Soviet joke (in Russian, anekdot [pl. anekdoty]). My work departs from previous analyses by locating the genre’s quintessence not in its formal properties, thematic taxonomy, or structural evolution, but in the essential links and productive contradictions between the anekdot and other texts and genres of Russo-Soviet culture. The anekdot’s defining intertextuality is prominent across a broad range of cycles, including those based on popular film and television narratives, political anekdoty, and other cycles that draw on more abstract discursive material. Central to my analysis is the genre’s capacity for reflexivity in various senses, including generic self-reference (anekdoty about anekdoty), ethnic self-reference (anekdoty about Russians and Russian-ness), and critical reference to the nature and practice of verbal signification in more or less implicit ways. The analytical and theoretical emphasis of the dissertation is on the years 1961—86, incorporating the Stagnation period plus additional years that are significant in the genre’s history. That quarter-century span in the USSR saw not only the coagulation of a way of life that provided ample fodder for oral satire, but also the appearance of a series of texts that provided source material for the topical anekdot cycles that to this day constitute a large portion of the Russian jokelore corpus. Before turning to the Soviet-period anekdot, I discuss the eighteenth- iv and nineteenth-century distinction between the literary or historical anekdot—a written genre not reliant on humor and in which real-life people figured—and the traditional folk anekdot, an offshoot of the folktale. The twentieth-century anekdot represented a confluence of its folkloric and inscribed forebears, combining features of (and effectively superseding) both traditions. By the 1960s, the attributes and functions the genre had accrued over the course of its development began to resonate with the underlying tropes, conflicts, and values of the society to such a degree that the anekdot became a kind of “genre-laureate” of the age. The dissertation concludes with an examination of the post-censorship anekdot, and a contextualization of the genre in the larger cultural atmosphere of contemporary Russia. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE...................................................................................................................................... ix 1.0. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1. MOZART AND SALIERI...................................................................................... 6 1.2. THE IRONY PAGEANT ..................................................................................... 16 1.3. PREDECESSORS AND PREMISES................................................................... 20 2.0. CHAPTER ONE: GENERIC PROVENANCE................................................................ 28 2.1. ETYMOLOGY ..................................................................................................... 29 2.2. THE FOLK ANEKDOT ........................................................................................ 31 2.3. MINSTRELS AND BUFFOONS......................................................................... 42 2.4. SHORT HUMOROUS GENRES......................................................................... 49 2.5. THE HISTORICAL ANECDOTE ....................................................................... 54 2.6. THE LITERARY ANEKDOT............................................................................... 61 3.0. CHAPTER TWO: TRADITION AND CONTEMPORANEITY .................................... 69 3.1. THE URBAN(IZED) ANEKDOT......................................................................... 70 3.2. META-MYTHOLOGY, META-FOLKLORE..................................................... 73 3.3. NOVELTIES......................................................................................................... 80 3.4. THE OMNIVOROUS ANEKDOT ....................................................................... 98 4.0. CHAPTER THREE: RESONANT DISSONANCE (THE ANEKDOT AND STAGNATION) ............................................................................................................. 102 4.1. CULTURE-BEARING GENRES ...................................................................... 106 4.2. STAGNATION AS THE THAW OF THE ANEKDOT..................................... 108 4.3. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES .............................................................................. 119 4.4. NASH CHELOVEK ON STAGE: MIKHAIL ZHVANETSKII ......................... 125 5.0. CHAPTER FOUR: DISCURSIVE REFLEXIVITY IN THE ANEKDOT..................... 137 5.1. META-ANEKDOTY ........................................................................................... 141 vi 5.2. THE ABSTRACT ANEKDOT............................................................................ 145 5.3. ANEKDOT-TELLERS AS MEDIA CRITICS ................................................... 148 6.0. CHAPTER FIVE: ETHNIC REFLEXIVITY................................................................. 157 6.1. RUSSIAN OR SOVIET?.................................................................................... 161 6.2. THE POLITICS OF SELF-REGARD................................................................ 164 6.3. MULTI-ETHNIC ANEKDOTY .......................................................................... 172 6.4. CHAPAEV.......................................................................................................... 175 6.5. THE CHUKCHI CYCLE: OTKUDA, ODNAKO? ............................................. 191 7.0. CHAPTER SIX: THE AFTERLIFE OF THE SOVIET ANEKDOT.............................. 203 7.1. POST-STAGNATION DEFLATION ................................................................ 203 7.2. THE ANEKDOT IN PRINT................................................................................ 205 7.3. RESURGENT PHYSICALITY.......................................................................... 209 7.4. POST-SOVIET (AND POST-POST-SOVIET) POLITICAL HUMOR............ 211 7.5. THE “NEW RUSSIAN” JOKE: A NEW RUSSIAN JOKE? ............................ 214 8.0. EPILOGUE AND CONCLUSION ................................................................................ 235 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................... 244 FILMOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................ 279 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Zhvanetskii on Stage .................................................................................................. 129 Figure 2. Chapaev Pistachio Nuts.............................................................................................. 181 Figure 3. Sequence from Chapaev............................................................................................. 186 Figure 4. Shtirlits ....................................................................................................................... 189 Figure 5. Anekdot Collections from the 1990s........................................................................... 207 Figure 6. Anekdoty and Stories about New Russians................................................................. 224 viii PREFACE My teachers and mentors at Pitt—Nancy Condee, Helena Goscilo, Vladimir Padunov, David Birnbaum, Jane Harris, Mark Altshuller, Elena Dryzhakova, and Mark Lipovetsky—have uniformly treated me and my fellow graduate students as much as junior colleagues as students, and I’ll always be in their debt for their unflagging professional and personal encouragement. I owe special thanks to Colin MacCabe for agreeing to join my committee at a very late date, and for making thoughtful and pertinent comments nevertheless. Parts of this thesis have also benefited from careful readings by Moya Luckett, Valery Belyanin, Emil Draitser, and Donald Barton Johnson. I’ve been fortunate to be part of an exceptional group of graduate students and other friends here in Pittsburgh, and I thank them all for their support and comradery over the years, especially Petre Petrov, Sasha Prokhorov, Lena Prokhorova, Jerry McCausland, Lisa Di Bartolomeo, Sarah Slevinski, John Kachur, Julia Houkom, Mike Brewer, Ben Sutcliffe, Olga Karpushina, Irina Makoveeva, Maria Jett, Nadia Kirkov, Dawn Seckler, Sara Schwartz, Yasia Semikolenova, Ilya Goldin, and Daniel Wild. I also want to thank José Alaniz and Margo Ballou for their years of friendship, commiseration, and marvelous narratives. Many friends and colleagues in Russia have
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