Red Humor: Hammer and Sickle Jokes

It is important to remember the crucial era of modern history dominated by Soviet Russia and Red China, symbolized by Stalin and Mao, through Communist-style humor. The jokes were created mainly in the West, but also within the Communist system, which produced a rich sample of humor about political rule, music, oppression of the common man, and other realities of Communism.

After tensions were thought dissipated between the superpowers, and capitalism was declared the winner, Communism was thought to have disappeared. But with the renewal of world difficulties, there is a need to reminisce on how Communism was conceived through Soviet jokes.

Red Humor is divided into the Czarist period to Stalin’s era, supplemented by memorable one-liners that immortalize that seven-decade harsh era.

The author wrote this joke collection “to collect those bits of humor before they are forgotten.”

A Jew was dying in his bed during a bitterly cold and snowy night in Russia. He called his wife to his side and faintly murmured:

- Sarah! The time has come! Call the Priest!

- The Priest? Are you crazy Abraham? You mean Rabbi!

- No, Sarah, I mean the Priest. I don’t want to disturb the Rabbi in such terrible weather as this.

(About the Author)

Raphael Israeli has taught Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. A graduate of Hebrew University in history and Arabic literature, he earned a Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic history from the University of California, Berkeley. Now retired, he has been a Fellow of the Harry Truman Research Institute at Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s, and is the author of over 60 research books, a dozen edited books, and 100 scholarly articles about Islam.