HAMMER AND TICKLE

Q: Why, despite all the shortages, was the toilet paper in East Germanyalways 2-ply? A: Because they had to send a copy of everything they did toMoscow. Communist jokes are the strangest, funniest, most enchanting andmeaningful legacy of the 80 years of political experimentation in Russiaand Eastern Europe, known as Communism. The valiant and sardonic citizensof the former Communist countries - surrounded by an invisible network ofsecret police, threatened with arrest, imprisonment and forced labour,confronted by an economic system that left shops empty, and bombarded withludicrous state propaganda - turned joke-telling into an art form. Theyused jokes as a coded way of speaking the truth. HAMMER AND TICKLE takesus on a unique journey through the Communist era (1917-1989), and tellsits real history through subversive jokes and joke-tellers, many of whomended up in the gulags. It is also illustrated with a combination of rareand previously unpublished archive material, political cartoons,caricatures, photographs and state-sponsored propaganda.Humorous,culturally poignant and historically revealing, this is the story of apolitical system that was (almost) laughed out of existence