Russian jokes (Russian: анекдо́ты (transcribed anekdoty), literally anecdotes), the most popular form of Russian humour, are short fictional stories or dialogues with a punch line.
Russian joke culture includes a series of categories with fixed and highly familiar settings and characters. Surprising effects are achieved by an endless variety of plots. Russian jokes are on topics found everywhere in the world, be it sex, politics, spouse relations, or mothers-in-law. This article discusses Russian joke subjects that are particular to Russian or Soviet culture.
Every category has a host of untranslatable jokes that rely on linguistic puns, wordplay, and Russian's vocabulary of foul language. Below, (L) marks jokes whose humor value critically depends on untranslatable features of the Russian language.
A huge category is Russian political jokes.
Read more about Russian Jokes: Puns, Religion, Russian Military Jokes, University Students, Cowboy Jokes, Jokes About Disabilities, Taboo Vocabulary
Famous quotes containing the words russian and/or jokes:
“In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn’t the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“A difference of tastes in jokes is a great strain on the affections.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)