Russian Political Jokes - Soviet Union - Gulag - Gulag Archipelago

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book, Gulag Archipelago, has a chapter entitled "Zeks as a Nation", which is a mock ethnographic sketch intended to "prove" that the inhabitants of the Gulag Archipelago constitute a separate nation according to "the only scientific definition of nation given by comrade Stalin". As part of the research, Solzhenitsyn analyzes humor of zeks (gulag inmates). Some examples:

• "He was sentenced to three years, served five, then fortunately was released ahead of time." (The joke hints to a common practice, described by Solzhenitsyn, of arbitrary extending the sentence term or adding new accusations). In a similar vein, when someone asked to add something, e.g., more boiled water into a cup, a typical retort was "The prosecutor will add!"
• "Is it hard in gulag?" — "Only during the first 10 years."
• When the quarter-century term had become standard for Article 58, the common joke was: "OK, now 25 years of life are guaranteed!"