Most people associate the Stalinist period in the history of the Soviet state with mass repression, impenetrable darkness, and solemn didacticism. However, the popular culture of those years was largely linked to laughter: it included comedy films and satirical plays, cartoons and feuilletons, proverbs, ditties and fables, vaudeville and collective farm comedies, even courtroom speeches and speeches by Stalin himself. The authors of this book, Yevgeny Dobrenko and Natalia Jonsson-Skradol, focus on this state-sanctioned laughter, which became an instrument of suppression and control in its hands. Tracing the development of official genres of humor, satire, and comedy during the Stalin era, the authors demonstrate how this art form expressed the tastes of a mass audience and its ultimate purpose, while also reconsidering established stereotypes about the anti-totalitarian and spontaneous nature of laughter. Evgeny Dobrenko is a philologist, cultural historian, professor at the University of Venice, and author of 'Late Stalinism,' published by NLO. Natalia Jonsson-Skradol is a research fellow at the University of Sheffield and the author of works on the role and functions of language in totalitarian regimes.