Hammer and Tickle by Ben Lewis

“Can you please schedule an appointment with the ear-eye specialist for me?”
“No, sorry, we only have an ear-throat specialist here. What is your problem exactly?”
“Oh, I constantly hear one thing but see something totally different.”

I don’t remember bumping into this joke in the Hammer and Tickle book. And although the author warned us the readers that he deliberately omitted all the jokes prone to losing in translation, I think this one makes perfect sense in both English and Russian.

Seeing one thing and hearing the opposite, the phenomenon described by George Orwell as “double-speak”, although applicable to various social structures, has been an intrinsic feature of the Soviet life. The book is written as a PhD thesis but hilarious nevertheless.

The author seems to be genuinely searching for the answer to the egg-and-chicken kind of question, whether the Communist regime caused the heritage of the anti-soviet humor, or rather it fell victim to the nation laughing it out loud.

Now, no matter if the author was serious in his search or not, the book is a joyful reading for anyone who lived through the ordeal as well as for those interested in Orwellian social psychology. I am not joking.

Buy from Amazon: Hammer and Tickle: The Story of Communism, A Political System Almost Laughed Out of Existence