SUMMARY:

This essay is a contribution to the discussion forum “Mainstream Narratives of Soviet History and the Laughter of Surprise,” framed as responses by literary scholars, historians, and political scientists to Sheila Fitzpatrick’s essay “Soviet History as Black Comedy.” Mark Edele embraces Fitzpatrick’s appreciation of black comedy as affording a position of alienation from ourselves and a productive analytical distance. But the Soviet hierarchical, bureaucratized sociocultural system that generates comic effects has parallels in many non-Soviet cultures, including Edele’s own Australian academic culture. The real question then becomes: Does a preoccupation with the absurd promote a certain kind of history writing? Going through many examples of jokes about tragic circumstances and dictatorial regimes by insiders in particular, Edele concludes that outsiders can embrace this mode of reflecting on dictatorships to expose them as absurd and pompous exercises.