Ben Lewis (2)
Forfatter af Hammer & Tickle
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Om forfatteren
Ben Lewis is a columnist for Prospect magazine. His award winning film Hammer and Tickle, the inspiration for this book, appeared on the BBC. He lives in London.
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Hammer and tickle : the story of communism, a… af Ben Lewis
Good jokes, repeated and repeated, with clumsy prose
I think Ben Lewis's research methods and conclusions were interesting and insightful. The book is primarily a narrative of his research process, which can be slow at moments but gives credibility to his ideas. He skillfully blends jokes into the story. I learned a lot about the people who lived under the USSR by reading the jokes, and I laughed.
Jokes are nostalgic, the narrative is boring although seems quite authentic.
Lewis says that an eighth of the people in the gulag were there for ‘telling anecdotes’, a figure that he finds small but I thought sizeable enough. The joke about the notorious White Sea canal project, built by prison labour, goes as follows:
Who built the White Sea canal?
The right bank was dug by those who told jokes…
And the left bank?
By those who listened.
The point of punishing joke-tellers was to demonstrate that the state would tolerate not the smallest or most casual expression of dissent, as Roy Medvedev tells Lewis. There’s a joke about that as well:
What is the difference between Stalin and Roosevelt?
Roosevelt collects the jokes that people tell about him, and Stalin collects the people that tell jokes about him.
More here: http://aroundtheedges.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/the-seven-wonders-of-communism/… (mere)
Who built the White Sea canal?
The right bank was dug by those who told jokes…
And the left bank?
By those who listened.
The point of punishing joke-tellers was to demonstrate that the state would tolerate not the smallest or most casual expression of dissent, as Roy Medvedev tells Lewis. There’s a joke about that as well:
What is the difference between Stalin and Roosevelt?
Roosevelt collects the jokes that people tell about him, and Stalin collects the people that tell jokes about him.
More here: http://aroundtheedges.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/the-seven-wonders-of-communism/… (mere)
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