Why do people living under authoritarian regimes tell jokes about the governments that repress them? The old explanation has been that this was a form of clandestine rebellion, a risky but satisfying way to voice one’s opposition to the oppressive regime. Anastasiya Astapova argues that telling jokes about Lukashenko, the long-time president of Belarus, is less an act of opposition and more a statement describing the absurdity and futility of the situation in which the people of Belarus find themselves. Furthermore, these statements actually support the regime. By giving voice to the condition of life in Belarus, the jokes allow people to make peace with their situation and endure their authoritarian government. Astapova is a Belarusian expat who was able to interview other expats like herself and, crucially, also had access to people living in Belarus: she was able to visit Minsk, the capital, and Vitebsk, her home city, and talk to people there. In many cases, her respondents were not respondents at all but people who sought her out to share their materials with her. Thus, her picture of life under “the last dictatorship in Europe” may be truer than studies of humor in other authoritarian states.
The humor part of Astapova’s work refers to jokes. Jokes have a clear structure and an artistic form. They can be question-and-answer texts, or they can be narratives with a twist or punchline at the end. Many involve word play such as the joke about Lukashenko’s driver accidentally running over a pig on a country road and his boss sending him into the village to compensate the peasants for their loss. When the driver returns drunk a while later, Lukashenko asks what happened and the man tells him that, when he confessed to having accidentally killed the swine, the villagers rejoiced, kissed and embraced him, and plied him with liquor. Jokes follow formats encountered in other traditions, such as having various national leaders boast of their country’s accomplishments. When Lukashenko’s turn comes, his statements turn out to be revealing of his country’s shortcomings. When presenting jokes, Astapova lists versions attested elsewhere, thus providing useful cross-references.
Astapova argues for including rumors along with jokes in her work. Not only are they both folk forms of expression, but both address the same fears and concerns. Both talk about the nature of the totalitarian, surveillance state under which Belarusians live. Both, Astapova states, express acceptance of the situation which people must endure. And Belarusians are willing to accept the status quo for the sake of stability, the author argues, because it is a Belarusian ethnic trait to tolerate discomfort as the joke about people from various nationalities sitting on a thumbtack confirms. Everyone forced to sit on the sharp object quickly gets up except the Belarusian. When asked if he suffered any pain, he admits that he did, but adds that he just assumed that things were supposed to be that way.
Rumors, unlike jokes, do not have a clear structure. They are statements about constant and universal surveillance. This can be monitoring by official organs, and Belarus, the author reminds us, is the one post-Soviet state that has retained the KGB. But anyone in Belarus can report on one’s fellow citizens and their misdeeds, creating a panopticon, a situation where anyone and everyone is on constant view and thus forced to practice self-control and to self-police for fear that someone else might do it for them or to them. In addition to rumors about surveillance and the constant fear of punishment, there are also jokes about the threat of arrest. Astapova devotes one chapter, the first one in her book, to rumors alone while the third chapter is about jokes which, along with rumors, express fear. This fear need not be based on actual actions against the state. The people arrested and tried for the terrorist attack in Vitebsk in 2005 were likely not the actual culprits. Under an authoritarian government, the author argues, once the state decides that you are guilty, it is virtually impossible to prove otherwise. She then gives a joke about a fleeing rabbit. When asked why he is running, the rabbit answers that camels are being castrated. “But you are not a camel,” the other speaker remarks. “And try to prove that you are not a camel once you are caught,” the rabbit counters.
Most of the rest of the book, chapters 2, 4 and 5, is about Lukashenko. The first of these chapters establishes that Lukashenko is indeed a dictator. The joke is the simple question: “Why do all dictators have mustaches?” and all one needs to do is think of people who fit this category to see that it is indeed true. Lukashenko is shown as unwilling to give up power and probably planning to hand over his position as head of state to his youngest son. Lukashenko himself is presented as crude, uneducated, and incapable of learning—and boastful of his abilities at the same time. Lukashenko’s knowledge of the Belarusian language, despite his claims to be a Belarusian patriot, is brought into question, and his unsuccessful attempts to demonstrate his level of sophistication by presenting himself as multi-lingual even more so. People admit their desire to rid themselves of Lukashenko to his face, only he is too self-centered and too dense to realize, at first, what they are saying.
A hagiography of sorts exists about Lukashenko, and this is presented in chapter 4. Lukashenko is said to be a man of the people, born in a village and raised by a single mother, a narrative leading to many jokes and rumors about who his father might be. His father is even said to have been killed in the Second World War, a conflict central to the Belarusian imagination and the country’s desire for peace and stability. This is an interesting and improbable construct since Lukashenko’s date of birth is 1954. There are jokes that ascribe extraordinary sexual vigor and prowess to Lukashenko, only the butt of the joke is not the Belarusian president but the traffic policeman who does not realize that the pretty girl driving one luxury car after another gets them from Lukashenko. The president also tries to present himself as physically fit and youthful, and there are rumors that new sports stadiums are constructed based on the sport that Lukashenko has most recently taken up. When a library was built in Minsk, the jokes implied that Lukashenko had finally learned to read.
Chapter 5 deals with Potemkin villages, fake presentations of the happy life of the Belarusian people staged for Lukashenko’s visit to a particular area. The people who stage these presentations both make jokes about what they are doing, admitting that it is all a sham, and go along with the process of creating the effects desired by their dictator. Many of the statements quoted in this part of the book are not jokes, but expressions of fear of what might happen if Lukashenko’s expectations are not met. People admit to window dressing that obscures the rot beneath the façade. This focus on appearances, Astapova argues, is important for Belarusian foreign relations as well as to keep the country itself in check.
The final chapter of the book is about the Belarusian elections of 2015. Lukashenko’s victory in the 2006 and 2010 elections sparked some protests, but by the time of the 2015 election protest seemed futile and opposition candidates were not really opponents at all but paper tigers put in place to create the illusion of democracy. The folklore that went along with this event can hardly be called either jokes or rumors of threats of prosecution. Rather, these are feeble statements describing the futility of the situation. One real joke is about Hugo Chavez calling in Lukashenko to help him get elected and Lukashenko getting elected in Chavez’s place.
This book is as much about Belarusian politics as it is about folklore, and the final brief chapter notes that “every joke has only a shred of a joke to it.” In other words, this material describes the reality of the situation, one that is both difficult to tolerate and yet accepted with the help of humor and rumors. The book stresses the central role of Lukashenko in the creation of this state of affairs, and it offers no solution because it ends with the election of 2015 when Belarusians quietly assumed that Lukashenko would win the presidency yet again. This is unfortunate because the 2020 election was different, and after Lukashenko’s improbable victory the population took to the streets in protest—only to be brutally suppressed. Apparently, there came a point when humor and rumor could no longer provide enough of an outlet to sustain the regime and only persecution and imprisonment of protestors would do. Is there any role for humor under these circumstances? It is hard to say. It is easy to imagine rumors as warnings about the consequences of joking in today’s Belarus, but it is hard to determine whether joking can actually exist in the face of extreme brutality.
Astapova’s book, by treating rumors along with jokes and underscoring the precarious, if not outright dangerous, situation in which the citizens of Belarus find themselves, offers an in-depth case study of the one remaining post-Soviet authoritarian state. It thus provides material that can be used for comparison to the studies of Soviet jokes that have already been published. It can prove useful for examining other oppressive regimes. It may also provide material from which to take a new look at the democratic West. Many people in the United States, encouraged by Donald Trump, considered institutions such as the press to be replete with “fake news.” Even post-Trump, rumors of election fraud and vaccine conspiracies abound. Are there any jokes that go along with these rumors? Can a study such as Astapova’s offer a fresh perspective on the rumors, if not the humor, of the West?
--------
[Review length: 1658 words • Review posted on December 9, 2021]