The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II through Objects by Brandon M. Schechter (review)

Abstract

to curb the popular lampooning and mockery of high party officials, but it also seems to have been consumed quite selectively by Soviet society. According to the Harvard Project, most readers of Krokodil failed to associate the journal with an inherently politicized sense of humor. Of the roughly fifty respondents who recalled being regular readers of the journal, only two mentioned its publishing anything other than cartoons and funny stories.12 Such findings suggest that many Soviet citizens did not intuitively connect Krokodil’s amusing fare with more serious issues of the day – which calls into question official humor’s ability to shape public opinion. Such observations about the popular reception of official humor are fragmentary, of course, and require further research in order to more fully test Dobrenko and JonssonSkradol’s findings. In the meantime, State Laughter should be considered a must-read for anyone interested in Soviet mass culture under Stalin.