State machinery. Stalinism and comedy

The Stalinist period in the history of the Soviet state is associated in most people with mass repressions, hopeless darkness and solemn didactics. However, the popular culture of those years was largely related to laughter: it was made up of film comedies and satirical plays, caricatures and feuilletons, proverbs, ditties and fables, vodvili and collective farm comedies, even the judicial speeches and performances of Stalin himself. The focus of the authors of the book is Evgenia Dobrenko and Natalia Johnsson-Skradol-this authorized by the state and became in his hands an instrument of suppression and control of laughter. Clearing the development of official genres of humor, satires and comedies in the Stalin era, the authors demonstrate how this art expressed the tastes of the mass audience and what was its ultimate goal, and at the same time the established stereotypes about the antitotalitarianism and the spontaneity of laughter. Evgeny Dobrenko is a philologist, a historian of culture, a professor at the University of Venice, author of the book late Stalinism, published in UFO. Natalya Johnsson-Skradol is a researcher at the University of Sheffield, author of works on the role and functions of the language in totalitarian regimes