State Laughter

Evgeny Dobrenko is Professor of Russian Studies at Ca' Foscari University. He has previously held posts across the, then, Soviet Union, the USA, and the UK, including, among others, the Moscow and Odessa State Universities, Stanford, Amherst, and the University of California. Over his career he has authored, edited and co-edited some 20 books and more than 250 articles and essays on Soviet and post-Soviet literature and culture, Stalinism, Socialist Realism, Soviet national literatures, Russian and Soviet film, critical theory, and Soviet cultural history.Natalia Jonsson-Skradol has published over 20 articles on functions and uses of language in oppressive regimes. Her work has appeared in Slavic Review, Utopian Studies, Slavonic and East European Review, German Quarterly and in other academic publications. She has lived and worked in Israel, Germany, Austria, and the UK.

Broadly interdisciplinary and replete with nuanced insights into Stalin-era comedic practices, discourses, and genres, Dobrenko and Jonsson-Skradol's gripping volume offers new perspectives on humor under totalitarianism. This empirically-rich, theoretically-informed, and carefully documented study is bound to appeal to a wide range of scholars and students of Soviet history, literature, and culture.