Authoritarian Laughter: Political Humor and Soviet Dystopia in Lithuania

Authoritarian Laughter explores the political history of the satire and humor magazine Broom published in Soviet Lithuania, revealing how it facilitated Communist Party agendas while expressing opposition to the Soviet regime. It illustrates how authoritarian states engage in a statecraft of the everyday and how authoritarianism is defied in the stories people tell each other in jokes, cartoons, and satires.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 306 pages
Publication date: 22 November 2022
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Authoritarian Laughter delves into the political history of the satire and humor magazine Broom, published in Soviet Lithuania. Following Lithuania's incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940, artists, writers, and journalists were mandated to create state-sponsored Soviet humor and serve the Communist Party. Neringa Klumbytė explores the official attempts to mold citizens into Soviet subjects and engage them through a culture of popular humor.

Broom was a multifaceted publication, serving both to facilitate Communist Party agendas and express opposition to the Soviet regime. Official satire and humor in Soviet Lithuania increasingly portrayed dystopian visions of Soviet modernity and provided a platform for critical ideas and nationalist sentiments that were mobilized in anti-Soviet revolutionary laughter during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Authoritarian Laughter demonstrates that Soviet Western peripheries were unstable and their governance was limited. While authoritarian states engage in a statecraft of the everyday and seek to engineer intimate lives, authoritarianism is challenged not only in revolutions but also in the many stories people tell each other about themselves through jokes, cartoons, and satires.

Weight: 470g
Dimension: 153 x 227 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501766695