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It's Just a Joke, Comrade: 100 Years of Russian Satire

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Comedian and Russophile Viv Groskop explores a century of revolutionary comedy.

It's Just a Joke, Comrade: 100 Years of Russian Satire: Series 1

It's Just a Joke, Comrade: 100 Years of Russian Satire: Series 1: Episode 1

Factual

Episode 1

Series 1

BBC Radio 4 - It's Just a Joke, Comrade: 100 Years of Russian Satire, Series 1, Episode 1

Comedian and Russophile Viv Groskop explores how a century of revolutionary comedy shaped Russia's national psyche.

The Russian Revolution unleashed a brand of humour that continues to this day. In this two-part series, comedian and Russophile Viv Groskop explores a century of revolutionary comedy and asks how it continues to shape the national psyche.

The series will rediscover comedy of the Revolution: Bolshevik satire, early Communist cartoons and jokes about Lenin, as writers, satirists and comedians recall the jokes and cartoons shared by their parents and grandparents.

Viv will investigate the birth of the 'anekdot' and trace the development of dark humour through the purges. She will look at how dissident humour in the late 1950s influenced comedy in London and New York, and meet contemporary comedians to gain an understanding of the shape and sound of the comedy circuit in Russia today. 

Producer: Georgia Catt.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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It's Just a Joke, Comrade: 100 Years of Russian Satire

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