Why All Dictators Have Moustaches: Political Jokes in Contemporary Belarus

Abstract

AbstractBased on the repertoire of Belarusian oral political jokes collected between 2011 and 2013, this article compares contemporary Belarusian humor to the earlier Socialist and contemporary non-Belarusian jokes. During this study, I discovered that Belarusian oral jokes mostly have versions created through various schemes of adaptation in other countries and about other figures (not necessarily political). The continuity goes far beyond the exchange of jokes between dictatorships (as it may initially seem after the comparison of Belarusian and Socialist jokes). I also discovered that Belarusian oral jokes are mostly authoritarian – ridiculing the regime and the president, unlike post-totalitarian ones targeting ideology. Finally, drawing from the emic perspective which coins many more forms and themes as the markers of political jokes than the scholars usually do, I show how expansive the notion of political humor may be.