Soviet Union Funny Quotes

There’s a joke that used to make the rounds in the Soviet Union. It was about a judge seen chuckling as he walks out of his courtroom. “What’s so funny?” asks a friend. “I heard a great joke.” “Tell me.” “Can’t, I just gave someone ten years for repeating it.

The military authorities were concerned that soldiers going home on leave would demoralize the home population with horror stories of the Ostfront. ‘You are under military law,’ ran the forceful reminder, ‘and you are still subject to punishment. Don’t speak about weapons, tactics or losses. Don’t speak about bad rations or injustice. The intelligence service of the enemy is ready to exploit it.’ One soldier, or more likely a group, produced their own version of instructions, entitled ‘Notes for Those Going on Leave.’ Their attempt to be funny reveals a great deal about the brutalizing affects of the Ostfront. ‘You must remember that you are entering a National Socialist country whose living conditions are very different to those to which you have been accustomed. You must be tactful with the inhabitants, adapting to their customs and refrain from the habits which you have come to love so much. Food: Do not rip up the parquet or other kinds of floor, because potatoes are kept in a different place. Curfew: If you forget your key, try to open the door with the round-shaped object. Only in cases of extreme urgency use a grenade. Defense Against Partisans: It is not necessary to ask civilians the password and open fire upon receiving an unsatisfactory answer. Defense Against Animals: Dogs with mines attached to them are a special feature of the Soviet Union. German dogs in the worst cases bite, but they do not explode. Shooting every dog you see, although recommended in the Soviet Union, might create a bad impression. Relations with the Civil Population: In Germany just because someone is wearing women’s clothes does not necessarily mean that she is a partisan. But in spite of this, they are dangerous for anyone on leave from the front. General: When on leave back to the Fatherland take care not to talk about the paradise existence in the Soviet Union in case everybody wants to come here and spoil our idyllic comfort.

in order to discourage people from missing the annual communal work fest, the border to Uzbekistan is closed to everyone except foreigners. Every autumn. hundreds of thousands of doctors, teachers, nurses, bureaucrats and other public sector employees, as well as students, are called on to pick cotton - an old tradition from Soviet times that has been maintained; the only difference being that in the Soviet Union, the majority of the harvesting was done by machine, whereas now it is done by hand, as non one has troubled to maintain and repair the machines. As the flowering season is so short, the 1.4 million hectares of cotton have to be picked in the space of a few frantic weeks and many people have to sleep under the open sky or on cold, crammed floors. An impressive number of public sector employees and people from other affected groups used to take long family holidays to neighbouring countries during the cotton harvest, but a stop has been put to that now.

THE YEAR OF MIRACLES, 1990 A young woman is on a plane coming from the Eastern Mediterranean, and is joined by a man who says, ‘Tell me what’s been happening in the world. I’ve been in the Himalayas for months, and I’ve not seen a newspaper nor heard the news. Thank God.’ ‘Well now, let me see’, says she. ‘The Soviet Union has given up communism, the Soviet colonies have given up the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall is down and Germany is united. In South Africa they have given up apartheid.’ ‘Very funny’, says he, ‘and now tell me what has really happened.