The CIA this week released more than 12 million pages of declassified files about its activities between the 1940s and the 1990s. The huge electronic archive, now open to the public for the first time, gives insights into several decades of Washington’s foreign policy, including some of the most important events in U.S., history, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War and U.S. conflicts with Vietnam and Korea.
Also covered among the documents are quirkier topics like UFO sightings, telepathy and… a list of Soviet jokes used by spymasters as propaganda.
According to the Moscow Times, the jokes, which were prepared for the CIA’s deputy director of counter-intelligence, appear to be from the ’80s, during Russia’s period of economic and political reform known as Perestroika. While their purpose isn’t spelled out in the declassified documents, it appears they were used to help sow doubts among Russians about their leaders.
“I suspect they were circulated by the CIA with the view that humor is a powerful political tool and that these jokes would enter into the mainstream and help undermine the authority of the Soviet leadership,” Jack Devine, a veteran of Central Intelligence Agency, told us. “Humor is a good way to undermine the opposition. And certainly was used by all sides in the Cold War.”
Some of the jokes were conceived of by the Americans, while others were already circulating in Russia, and the CIA presumably was planning to promulgate them even more widely.
A few of jokes that appeared in the documents…
“A man walks into a shop. He asks the clerk, “You don’t have any meat?” The clerk says, “No, here we don’t have any fish. The shop that doesn’t have any meat is across the street.”
“An American explains to a Russian that the United States is a truly free country because he can stand in front of the White House and shout ‘To hell with Ronald Reagan!’ The Russian says that this is nonsense, because he can easily stand in Red Square and shout ‘To hell with Ronald Reagan.”
A worker standing in a liquor line says: “I have had enough, save my place, I am going to shoot Gorbachev.” Two hours later he returns to claim his place in line. His friends ask, “Did you get him?” “No, the line there was even longer than the line here.
A man is driving with his wife and small child. A militia man pulls them over and makes the man take a breathalyzer test. “See,” the militia man says, “you are drunk.” The man protests that the breathalyzer must be broken and invites the cop to test his wife. She also registers as drunk. Exasperated, the man invites the cop to test his child. When the child registers drunk as well, the cop shrugs, says, “Yes, perhaps it is broken,” and send them on their way. Out of earshot the man tells his wife, “See, I told you it wouldn’t hurt to give the kid five grams of vodka.”
A train bearing Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev stops suddenly when the tracks run out. Each leader applies his own, unique solution. Lenin gathers workers and peasants from miles around and exhorts them to build more track. Stalin shoots the train crew when the train still doesn’t move. Khrushchev rehabilitates the dead crew and orders the tracks behind the train ripped up and relaid in front. Brezhnev pulls down the curtains and rocks back and forth, pretending the train is moving. And Gorbachev calls a rally in front of the locomotive, where he leads a chant: “No tracks! No tracks! No tracks!”
