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.” Benjamin Nathans reviews genres that have been used to narrate Soviet history, such as irony and tragedy, and shows that black comedy alone fosters irreverence and cognitive distance from the Soviet project. It builds a bridge between emic and etic interpretations of Soviet culture. But these functions of black comedy, Nathans argues, are older than the Soviet period. The prominence of these functions during the late Soviet era exposes its specificity vis-à-vis earlier periods. Furthermore, insiders and outsiders (like Fitzpatrick) found the Soviet experience funny for different reasons. Finally, black humor persists in Putin’s Russia. Nathans concludes with the question of whether what we have understood as Soviet is, in fact, Russian or universal.