Authoritarian Laughter: Political Humor and Soviet Dystopia in Lithuania

305 Pages·2022·9.624 MB·English

by  Neringa Klumbytė

AUTHORITARIAN
LAUGHTER

AUTHORITARIAN
LAUGHTER
Political Humor and Soviet
Dystopia in Lithuania
·
Neringa Klumbyte
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 2022 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the
publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East
State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.
First published 2022 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Klumbytė, Neringa, author.
Title: Authoritarian laughter : political humor and Soviet dystopia in Lithuania /
Neringa Klumbytė.
Description: Ithaca, New York : Cornell University Press, 2022. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022005833 (print) | LCCN 2022005834 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781501766688 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501766695 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781501766701 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501766718 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Šluota (Periodical)—Influence. | Political satire, Lithuanian. |
Lithuania—Politics and government—20th century—Humor.
Classification: LCC DK505.74 .K585 2022 (print) | LCC DK505.74 (ebook) |
DDC 947.93—dc23/eng/20220224
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005833
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005834
Jacket image: From the series “Blooming,” (Žydėjimas), 1974–1984. Photo by
Romualdas Rakauskas. Courtesy Eglė Rakauskaitė.
For Ieva and Kajus

Contents
Acknowledgments ix

Relevant Dates xiii

Note on Transliteration xv

Introduction: Authoritarian Laughter 1

1. Banality of Soviet Power 28

2. Political Intimacy 47

3. The Soviet Predicament 65

4. Censorial Indistinction 88

5. Political Aesthetics 118

6. Multidirectional Laughter 135

7. Satirical Justice 169

8. Soviet Dystopia 198

Post Scriptum: Revolution and Post-

authoritarian Laughter 219

Conclusion: Lost Laughter and Authoritarian Stigma 229

Notes 235

References 263

Index 277

Acknowledgments
Any joke is a story that people tell each other about themselves. I was fascinated
by the stories I discovered while exploring the state’s attempts to create Soviet
laughter in Lithuania and refashion people’s emotions, morals, and thoughts.
These stories uncovered the limits of authoritarianism and state power as well as
the boundlessness of freedom. My gratitude for this journey goes to Lithuanian
writers, journalists, and artists as well as my colleagues, friends, and family.
I am grateful to the artists, journalists, writers, and editors who generously
shared their memories of their lives in Soviet times. My deepest gratitude goes to
Kęstutis Šiaulytis and Dalia Šiaulytienė. I cannot even imagine this book without
Kęstas’s unwavering support and patience while answering my endless questions.
Kęstas introduced me to the Broom’s laughter and guided me through its secret
world of graphic art. I am grateful for his insights and friendship. As I write in my
introduction, this book would not be the same without discovering the personal
archive of Juozas Bulota, the longtime Broom editor in chief. My deep gratitude
goes to his son, Juozas Bulota, for spending weeks with me while I reviewed this
archive. Thank you to Donata Bulotienė for welcoming me to her summer home
and her past.
I am indebted to Stasė Lukšienė and the late Albertas Lukša for always wel­
coming me into their beautiful village home. I treasure my memories of coun­
try cheese and honey covered in flowers, and I was happy to have met the “big
dog” Mika. My gratitude goes to Andrius Cvirka and the late Birutė Cvirkienė
for opening to me the worlds of art and deep history. Without them, the pages
on artistic opposition in the Broom would not have been so interesting. I am
also very thankful to the late Romas Palčiauskas and his family. Palčiauskas’s
comic strips populated the pages of the Broom and entertained Lithuanian youth,
undermining the ideological goals of Soviet laughter. Alina Samukienė and
Arvydas Samukas, the family of Broom artist Fridrikas Samukas, kindly shared
their memories about Fridrikas Samukas’s graphic art.
I was happy to have met Algirdas Radvilavičius and Anelė Radvilavičienė. I am
grateful to their grandson Donatas Bartusevičius for keeping in touch. I wish
that Radvilavičiai, Albertas Lukša, Romualdas Lankauskas, Andrius Deltuva,
Birutė Cvirkienė, Goda Ferensienė, and Romuladas Palčiauskas had lived to see
this project completed. They were in my thoughts when I wrote this book, and
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
their memories are part of it, including Lukša’s story about his mare Kaštonė
that escaped from the Nazis and found her way back after three weeks, and
Lankauskas’s recollections of his “execution” by means of Broom parody. I thank
Regina Rudaitytė and the late Romualdas Lankauskas for opening the doors to
their world of art and literature for me; Vladimiras Beresniovas for stories about
Kaunas’s cartoonists; Šarūnas Jakštas, Jonas Lenkutis, and Andrius Gruzdaitis
for thoughts about graphic art; and Jonas Varnas for teaching me that any state
power is just a joke. Thank you to Vytautas Žeimantas, Domas Šniukas, Česlovas
Juršėnas, Adolfas Strakšys, Ona Banadienė, Laima Zurbienė, and Jeronimas
Laucius for introducing me to Soviet journalism and sharing their invaluable
knowledge. Vytautė Žilinskaitė was one of a few women who wrote satires and
feuilletons for the Broom as well as Krokodil. Her story of receiving a Kroko­
dil diploma coated with glue spoke about uneasy gender and nationality rela­
tions. Dita Lomsargytė-Pukienė and Elena Kurklietytė-Bubnienė graciously
shared their memories of work as journalists in Soviet times. I deeply value Dita
Lomsargytė-Pukienė’s insights into her life during World War II, which became
an entrance to one of the chapters in this book.
For an outsider to the field, anthropological research may seem a strange
endeavor—if someone looked at my online browsing history, they would see
that I had to look up words on guns because cartoon characters were pictured
with them, then searched Playboy pages in hope of finding an image published
in the Broom; explored sites of drunk tanks and rehabilitation centers in search
of adequate translations, or CIA websites for words to describe KGB documents.
My daughter Ieva has always been a wonderful linguistic mediator and transla­
tor. When I asked her to check if my description of drunks lying on the street
with wetted pants sounded right in English, I got a concerned message instead:
“Mom, what are you writing about?” I never imagined that I would need to know
the technical vocabulary of agricultural machinery or construction materials to
understand what the Broom editors were talking about. Some of this vocabulary
will be soon forgotten, since many Soviet realities do not exist anymore. While
writing the book, I had to navigate through three different languages: Lithuanian,
Russian, and English. I thank Glenn Novak, Sarah Stankorb, and Karyn Keane for
editorial assistance. Many thanks to Benjamin Sutcliffe and Masha Stepanova for
their assistance with transliteration.
I treasure the community at the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-
Soviet Studies at Miami University and especially the collegiality of Stephen
Norris, Benjamin Sutcliffe, Venelin Ganev, Scott Kenworthy, Daniel Prior, and
Zara Torlone. I know some of their thoughts have become mine, and I cannot
untangle them now. Thanks to Stephen Norris for conversations about the Broom
and Krokodil, for being the first to read my full manuscript, and for encouragement