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University studentsUniversity students
The life of most Russian university students is often associated with many people coming from small towns and living in dormitories. State universities (the only type of universities in existence in Soviet times) are notable for carelessness about the students' comfort and the quality of food. Most jokes make fun of these "interesting" conditions, inventive evasion by students of their academic duties or lecture attendance, constant shortage of money and sometimes about alcoholic tendencies of engineering students.
Students' nutrition
A memo in a student dining hall: Students, do not drop your food on the floor, two cats have already died after eating it.
A crocodile's stomach can digest concrete. A student's stomach can digest that of a crocodile.
A student in the canteen: "Can I have 2 hot dogs... and 17 forks, please?"
Study
Also, there are a number of funny student obsessions such as zachetka (a transcript of grades, carried by every student), halyava (a chance of getting good or acceptable grades without any effort) and getting a scholarship for good grades.
A large number of jokes are about an exam; these are usually a dialogue between the professor and the student, based on a set of questions written on a bilet (a small sheet of paper, literally: ticket), which the student draws at random in the exam room and is given some time to prepare answers for. Even more jokes use the fact that many (or even most) students really study only when the exam is in the near future (in one or two days), saving time for more interesting activities such as parties, videogames and so on.
Jokes about disabilities
Jokes about disabilities
Jokes set in mental hospitals are quite common in Russian humor, just as in the humor of other cultures. However psychiatry was part of Soviet political repressions and it is claimed that the tradition continued into modern Russia (see article "Psikhushka"). Therefore there is a notable political subseries of jokes about the mentally ill that is observed in Russian humor.
A lecturer visits the mental hospital and gives a lecture about how great communism is. Everybody claps loudly except for one person who keeps quiet. The lecturer asks: "why aren't you clapping?" and the person replies "I'm not a psycho, I work here."
A large number of jokes, arguably unparalleled among other nations, are about people with acute dystrophy, informally called distrofik in Russia. The main topics are extreme weakness, slowness, leanness, and weightlessness of a distrofik.
Distrofiks are playing hide and seek in the hospital. "Vovka, where are you?" / "I'm here, behind this broomstick!" / "Hey, didn't we have an arrangement not to hide behind thick objects?"
A jolly doctor comes into a dystrophy ward: "Greetings, eagles!" (a Russian cliché in addressing able-bodied men, e.g., brave soldiers) In reply: "No, we are not. We are flying because the nurse turned the fan on!"
A distrofik is lying in bed and shouting: "Nurse! Nurse!" / "What is it now?" / "Kill the fly! It's trampling my chest to pulp."
Taboo vocabulary
Taboo vocabulary
The very use of obscene Russian vocabulary, called mat, can enhance the humorous effect of a joke by its emotional impact. Due to the somewhat different cultural attitude to obscene slang, such an effect is difficult to render in English. The taboo status often makes mat itself the subject of a joke. One typical plot goes as follows.
A construction site expects an inspection from the higher-ups, so a foreman warns the boys to watch their tongues. During the inspection, a hammer is accidentally dropped from the fourth floor right on a worker's head... The punch line is an exceedingly polite, classy rebuke from the mouth of the injured. For example the injured worker might say: "Dear co-workers, could you please watch your tools a little more carefully, so as to prevent such cases and avoid work-place injuries?" or, even more improbably, "Vasya, please desist in pouring molten tin over my head."
Another series of jokes exploits the richness of the mat vocabulary, which can give a substitute to a great many words of everyday conversation. Other languages often use profanity in a similar way (like the English fuck, for example), but the highly synthetic grammar of Russian provides for the unambiguity and the outstandingly great number of various derivations from a single mat root. Emil Draitser points out that linguists explain that the linguistic properties of the Russian language rich in affixes allows for expression of a wide variety of feelings and notions using only a few core mat words:
An agenda item on working conditions at a trade union meeting of a Soviet plant. Locksmith Ivanov takes the floor: "Mother fuckers!... Go fuck yourself!... Fuck you and you too again!..." A voice from the audience: "Right to the point, Vasya! we won't work without work robes!"
As an ultimate joke in this series, the goal is to apply such substitution to as many words of a sentence as possible while keeping it meaningful. The following dialog at a construction site between a foreman and a worker retains a clear meaning even with all of its 14 words being derived from the single obscene word khuy. Russian language proficiency is needed to understand this.
- Fuckheads, why the fuck did you load so much of this shit? Unload it the fuck away from here!
- What's the fucking problem?! Fuck no! No need to unload! It got loaded alright! Let's fucking go!
Word-by-word:
- Ohuyeli?! (Have [you] gone mad?!) Nahuya (why) dohuya (so much) huyni (of stuff) nahuyarili (you have loaded up)? Rashuyarivay (unload [it]) nahuy! (out of here)
- Huli?! (What's the problem?) Nihuya! (No way!) Nehuy (No need) rashuyarivat (to unload)! Nahuyacheno ([It] got loaded) nehuyovo! (quite well)! Pohuyuarili! (Let's go)
After this example one may readily believe the following semi-apocryphal story. An inspection was expected at a Soviet plant to award it the Quality Mark, so the administration prohibited the usage of mat. On the next day the productivity dropped abruptly. People's Control figured out the reason: miscommunication. It turned out that workers knew all the tools and parts only by their mat-based names: huyovina, pizdyulina, huynyushka, huyatina, etc.; all of them loosely translated as "thing"; the same went for technological processes: othuyachit (to detach, cut, disconnect...), zayebenit (to push through, force into, ...), prihuyachit (to attach, connect, bond, nail, ...), huynut (to move slightly, throw, pour,...), zahuyarit (to throw far away, to put in deeply, ...)
про маленького мальчика
Vovochka
Vovochka
Vovochka is the Russian equivalent of Little Johnny. He interacts with his school teacher, Marivanna, a spoken shortened form of Maria Ivanovna, a stereotypical Russian name. "Vovochka" is a diminutive form of Vladimir, creating the "little boy" effect. His fellow students bear similarly diminutive names. This "little boy" name is used in contrast with Vovochka's wisecracking, adult, often obscene statements.
In biology class, the teacher draws a cucumber on the blackboard: "Children, could someone tell me what this is?" Vovochka raises his hand: "It's a dick, Marivanna!" Maria Ivanovna bursts into tears and runs out. In a minute the principal bursts in: "All right, what did you do now? It's something new every day! Yesterday you broke a window, and today...," he looks around, "...and today you draw a dick on the blackboard?"
The teacher asks the class to produce a word that starts with the letter "A"; Vovochka happily raises his hand and says "Asshole!" The teacher, shocked, responds "For shame! There's no such word!" "That's strange," says Vovochka, "the asshole exists, but the word doesn't!"
Since the election of Vladimir Putin, all jokes about Vovochka are considered political.
Vasily Ivanovich
Chapayev, Petka and Anka, in hiding from the Whites, are plastoon-style crawling across a field, first Anka, then Petka and Chapayev last. Petka says to Anka, "Anka, you lied about your proletarian descent! Your mother must have been a ballerina -- your legs are so fine!" Chapayev responds, "And your father, Petka, must have been a plowman: you are leaving such a deep furrow!"
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
Holmes and Watson went camping. After they went to bed, in the middle of the night Holmes wakes his friend up and asks: "Tell me, Watson, what does this starry sky tell you?" -- "It tells me that the weather is going to be nice in the morning" -- "And to me it tells that someone has stolen our bloody tent!".
Animals
Animals
Jokes set in the animal kingdom also feature characters, which draw their roots in the old Slavic fairy tales, where animals are portrayed as sapient beings with a stereotypical behavior, such as the violent Wolf, the sneaky (female) Fox, the cocky coward Hare, the strong, simple-minded Bear, the multi-dimensional Hedgehog and the king of animal kingdom, Lion. In the Russian language all objects, animate and inanimate, have a (grammatical) gender - masculine, feminine, or neuter. The reader should assume that the Wolf, the Bear, the Hare, Lion and the Hedgehog are males, whereas the Fox is a female.
The Bear, the Wolf, the Hare and the Fox are playing cards. The Bear warns, shuffling: "No cheating! If anyone is cheating, her smug red-furred face is gonna hurt!"
The Golden Fish
An American, a Frenchman and a Russian are alone on an uninhabited island. They catch fish for food and suddenly catch a Golden Fish, who promises to fulfill one wish for each for his own freedom:
The American: "A million dollars and to go back home!"
The Frenchman: "Three beautiful women and to go back home!"
The Russian: "Tsk, and just when we were getting on like a house on fire... Three crates of vodka and the two fellas back!"
Side Note: This joke is a play on the fact that in Russia it is believed that three is the optimal number of people for drinking. This in turn goes back to when in the Soviet Union a bottle of vodka cost 2 roubles 87 kopecks, 3 R. being a convenient price for three men to buy a bottle and have 13 k. left for a snack, (The classic was a pack of processed cheese Druzhba, with that exact price). Therefore a natural company is 3, each contributing 1 rouble. This procedure was dubbed "share for three(persons)" (Russian: сообразить на троих; soobrazit' na troikh). A good deal of Soviet folklore is based on this interpretation of the "magic of the number 3".
Chukcha
A Chukcha sits on the shore of the Bering Strait. An American submarine surfaces. The American captain opens the hatch and asks: "Which way is Alaska?" The Chukcha points his finger: "That way!" "Thanks!" says the American, shouts "South-South-East, bearing 159.5 degrees!" down the hatch and the submarine submerges. Ten minutes later a Soviet submarine emerges. The Russian captain opens the hatch and asks the Chukcha: "Where did the American submarine go?" The Chukcha replies: "South-South-East bearing 159.5 degrees!" "Don't be a smart-ass," says the captain, "just point your finger!"
The life of most Russian university students is often associated with many people coming from small towns and living in dormitories. State universities (the only type of universities in existence in Soviet times) are notable for carelessness about the students' comfort and the quality of food. Most jokes make fun of these "interesting" conditions, inventive evasion by students of their academic duties or lecture attendance, constant shortage of money and sometimes about alcoholic tendencies of engineering students.
Students' nutrition
A memo in a student dining hall: Students, do not drop your food on the floor, two cats have already died after eating it.
A crocodile's stomach can digest concrete. A student's stomach can digest that of a crocodile.
A student in the canteen: "Can I have 2 hot dogs... and 17 forks, please?"
Study
Also, there are a number of funny student obsessions such as zachetka (a transcript of grades, carried by every student), halyava (a chance of getting good or acceptable grades without any effort) and getting a scholarship for good grades.
A large number of jokes are about an exam; these are usually a dialogue between the professor and the student, based on a set of questions written on a bilet (a small sheet of paper, literally: ticket), which the student draws at random in the exam room and is given some time to prepare answers for. Even more jokes use the fact that many (or even most) students really study only when the exam is in the near future (in one or two days), saving time for more interesting activities such as parties, videogames and so on.
Jokes about disabilities
Jokes about disabilities
Jokes set in mental hospitals are quite common in Russian humor, just as in the humor of other cultures. However psychiatry was part of Soviet political repressions and it is claimed that the tradition continued into modern Russia (see article "Psikhushka"). Therefore there is a notable political subseries of jokes about the mentally ill that is observed in Russian humor.
A lecturer visits the mental hospital and gives a lecture about how great communism is. Everybody claps loudly except for one person who keeps quiet. The lecturer asks: "why aren't you clapping?" and the person replies "I'm not a psycho, I work here."
A large number of jokes, arguably unparalleled among other nations, are about people with acute dystrophy, informally called distrofik in Russia. The main topics are extreme weakness, slowness, leanness, and weightlessness of a distrofik.
Distrofiks are playing hide and seek in the hospital. "Vovka, where are you?" / "I'm here, behind this broomstick!" / "Hey, didn't we have an arrangement not to hide behind thick objects?"
A jolly doctor comes into a dystrophy ward: "Greetings, eagles!" (a Russian cliché in addressing able-bodied men, e.g., brave soldiers) In reply: "No, we are not. We are flying because the nurse turned the fan on!"
A distrofik is lying in bed and shouting: "Nurse! Nurse!" / "What is it now?" / "Kill the fly! It's trampling my chest to pulp."
Taboo vocabulary
Taboo vocabulary
The very use of obscene Russian vocabulary, called mat, can enhance the humorous effect of a joke by its emotional impact. Due to the somewhat different cultural attitude to obscene slang, such an effect is difficult to render in English. The taboo status often makes mat itself the subject of a joke. One typical plot goes as follows.
A construction site expects an inspection from the higher-ups, so a foreman warns the boys to watch their tongues. During the inspection, a hammer is accidentally dropped from the fourth floor right on a worker's head... The punch line is an exceedingly polite, classy rebuke from the mouth of the injured. For example the injured worker might say: "Dear co-workers, could you please watch your tools a little more carefully, so as to prevent such cases and avoid work-place injuries?" or, even more improbably, "Vasya, please desist in pouring molten tin over my head."
Another series of jokes exploits the richness of the mat vocabulary, which can give a substitute to a great many words of everyday conversation. Other languages often use profanity in a similar way (like the English fuck, for example), but the highly synthetic grammar of Russian provides for the unambiguity and the outstandingly great number of various derivations from a single mat root. Emil Draitser points out that linguists explain that the linguistic properties of the Russian language rich in affixes allows for expression of a wide variety of feelings and notions using only a few core mat words:
An agenda item on working conditions at a trade union meeting of a Soviet plant. Locksmith Ivanov takes the floor: "Mother fuckers!... Go fuck yourself!... Fuck you and you too again!..." A voice from the audience: "Right to the point, Vasya! we won't work without work robes!"
As an ultimate joke in this series, the goal is to apply such substitution to as many words of a sentence as possible while keeping it meaningful. The following dialog at a construction site between a foreman and a worker retains a clear meaning even with all of its 14 words being derived from the single obscene word khuy. Russian language proficiency is needed to understand this.
- Fuckheads, why the fuck did you load so much of this shit? Unload it the fuck away from here!
- What's the fucking problem?! Fuck no! No need to unload! It got loaded alright! Let's fucking go!
Word-by-word:
- Ohuyeli?! (Have [you] gone mad?!) Nahuya (why) dohuya (so much) huyni (of stuff) nahuyarili (you have loaded up)? Rashuyarivay (unload [it]) nahuy! (out of here)
- Huli?! (What's the problem?) Nihuya! (No way!) Nehuy (No need) rashuyarivat (to unload)! Nahuyacheno ([It] got loaded) nehuyovo! (quite well)! Pohuyuarili! (Let's go)
After this example one may readily believe the following semi-apocryphal story. An inspection was expected at a Soviet plant to award it the Quality Mark, so the administration prohibited the usage of mat. On the next day the productivity dropped abruptly. People's Control figured out the reason: miscommunication. It turned out that workers knew all the tools and parts only by their mat-based names: huyovina, pizdyulina, huynyushka, huyatina, etc.; all of them loosely translated as "thing"; the same went for technological processes: othuyachit (to detach, cut, disconnect...), zayebenit (to push through, force into, ...), prihuyachit (to attach, connect, bond, nail, ...), huynut (to move slightly, throw, pour,...), zahuyarit (to throw far away, to put in deeply, ...)
про маленького мальчика
| A little boy found a machine gun — Now his village's population is none. A boy played in the sandbox with no one to mind him, When quietly a mixing truck pulled up behind him. He peeped not a peep, cried out nary a cry — Just his sandals stuck out when the concrete was dry. | Маленький мальчик нашёл пулемёт — Больше в деревне никто не живёт. Маленький мальчик в песочке играл, Тихо подъехал к нему самосвал. Не было слышно ни крика, ни стона — Только сандали торчат из бетона. |
Vovochka
Vovochka
Vovochka is the Russian equivalent of Little Johnny. He interacts with his school teacher, Marivanna, a spoken shortened form of Maria Ivanovna, a stereotypical Russian name. "Vovochka" is a diminutive form of Vladimir, creating the "little boy" effect. His fellow students bear similarly diminutive names. This "little boy" name is used in contrast with Vovochka's wisecracking, adult, often obscene statements.
In biology class, the teacher draws a cucumber on the blackboard: "Children, could someone tell me what this is?" Vovochka raises his hand: "It's a dick, Marivanna!" Maria Ivanovna bursts into tears and runs out. In a minute the principal bursts in: "All right, what did you do now? It's something new every day! Yesterday you broke a window, and today...," he looks around, "...and today you draw a dick on the blackboard?"
The teacher asks the class to produce a word that starts with the letter "A"; Vovochka happily raises his hand and says "Asshole!" The teacher, shocked, responds "For shame! There's no such word!" "That's strange," says Vovochka, "the asshole exists, but the word doesn't!"
Since the election of Vladimir Putin, all jokes about Vovochka are considered political.
Vasily Ivanovich
Chapayev, Petka and Anka, in hiding from the Whites, are plastoon-style crawling across a field, first Anka, then Petka and Chapayev last. Petka says to Anka, "Anka, you lied about your proletarian descent! Your mother must have been a ballerina -- your legs are so fine!" Chapayev responds, "And your father, Petka, must have been a plowman: you are leaving such a deep furrow!"
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson
Holmes and Watson went camping. After they went to bed, in the middle of the night Holmes wakes his friend up and asks: "Tell me, Watson, what does this starry sky tell you?" -- "It tells me that the weather is going to be nice in the morning" -- "And to me it tells that someone has stolen our bloody tent!".
Animals
Animals
Jokes set in the animal kingdom also feature characters, which draw their roots in the old Slavic fairy tales, where animals are portrayed as sapient beings with a stereotypical behavior, such as the violent Wolf, the sneaky (female) Fox, the cocky coward Hare, the strong, simple-minded Bear, the multi-dimensional Hedgehog and the king of animal kingdom, Lion. In the Russian language all objects, animate and inanimate, have a (grammatical) gender - masculine, feminine, or neuter. The reader should assume that the Wolf, the Bear, the Hare, Lion and the Hedgehog are males, whereas the Fox is a female.
The Bear, the Wolf, the Hare and the Fox are playing cards. The Bear warns, shuffling: "No cheating! If anyone is cheating, her smug red-furred face is gonna hurt!"
The Golden Fish
An American, a Frenchman and a Russian are alone on an uninhabited island. They catch fish for food and suddenly catch a Golden Fish, who promises to fulfill one wish for each for his own freedom:
The American: "A million dollars and to go back home!"
The Frenchman: "Three beautiful women and to go back home!"
The Russian: "Tsk, and just when we were getting on like a house on fire... Three crates of vodka and the two fellas back!"
Side Note: This joke is a play on the fact that in Russia it is believed that three is the optimal number of people for drinking. This in turn goes back to when in the Soviet Union a bottle of vodka cost 2 roubles 87 kopecks, 3 R. being a convenient price for three men to buy a bottle and have 13 k. left for a snack, (The classic was a pack of processed cheese Druzhba, with that exact price). Therefore a natural company is 3, each contributing 1 rouble. This procedure was dubbed "share for three(persons)" (Russian: сообразить на троих; soobrazit' na troikh). A good deal of Soviet folklore is based on this interpretation of the "magic of the number 3".
Chukcha
A Chukcha sits on the shore of the Bering Strait. An American submarine surfaces. The American captain opens the hatch and asks: "Which way is Alaska?" The Chukcha points his finger: "That way!" "Thanks!" says the American, shouts "South-South-East, bearing 159.5 degrees!" down the hatch and the submarine submerges. Ten minutes later a Soviet submarine emerges. The Russian captain opens the hatch and asks the Chukcha: "Where did the American submarine go?" The Chukcha replies: "South-South-East bearing 159.5 degrees!" "Don't be a smart-ass," says the captain, "just point your finger!"