Abstract
In Stalin's Russia, millions of people did not just smile; they laughed, and a lot. In a popular biography of the dictator, Edvard Radzinsky reminds his readers of how, at the very hey day of terror, the national park in the center of Moscow turned into a much beloved location of merry carnivals and popular shows.1 The first comedies enjoyed a tremendous popularity in the 1930s, and when Slavoj Zizek, famous for his love of paradoxical and shocking statements, speaks of the kolkhoz musical as the Soviet genre par excellence, there are probably few people who would argue with him on this count.2 What is even more noteworthy is that there was often laughter in settings which one
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