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.” Ronald Suny’s central question is: How does one reveal absurdity without descending into mockery? He finds a partial answer in Fitzpatrick’s bottom-up, archives-based approach, which was emphatic, ironic, and skeptical, but never mocking. Although Fitzpatrick’s positionality contrasts with the most recent version of partisan, deadly serious “decolonization,” Suny argues that both these approaches overlook the source of Soviet irony such as the contradiction between nation-making and the imperial frame. That said, to productively apply the black-humor perspective to narrate this and other contradictions of the Soviet past one must, as Fitzpatrick does, retain empathy for and understanding of its imperfect actors.