I first heard a russian reversal in high school, and when I did, I didn’t laugh. what’s so funny about the dissolved soviet union? the fact that it dissolved? yes, that’s funny, in a shit-happens way. prior to that dissolution, though, who of my generation can actually remember having a good laugh at the red’s expense? nobody can. I’m hesitant to claim its use as a retrofied joke as another casualty of the irony age. (that’s as close to optimism I can bring this discussion with a full heart and healthy conscience.)

it could be just a bunch of dumb jokes about soviet russia made outdated and lame by the dissolution of, uh, soviet russia. it could be a drop of water in an unhealthy, vainly nostalgic tide. maybe the lameness is funny for some. maybe the nostalgia is funny for some. but is the fact of its lameness funny, or of its nostalgia? you can only laugh at an “other” for so long, and you can laugh at the memory of there ever being an “other” for even less time. it becomes tired.

a russian reversal isn’t funny because it’s lame, or because because-it’s-lame. it is simply funny. any understanding of yakov smirnov jokes must stem from an acknowledgement of that fact: they are funny. and if you’re not prepared to accept the humor of yakov smirnov, what’s the use of trying to understand it?

but that’s all religious horse shit. when it turns into a “just-because” like that, your interest in the subject, if not frustrated by that point, continues in the form of either a conversion or a vivisection. you can choose to laugh at the joke, or to not laugh at the joke. “soviet russia is no longer a country, but when it was one, it was vastly different from the united states.” it boils down to a decision over whether that is funny or not.

yakov smirnov jokes became abruptly outdated, yes, when the soviet union fell. with it, so, too, went his act; now that the lion’s share of it was bled dry, what became of his career? the old wisdom prevailed: career became of him. at one point, it might have been funny. I can’t say, since I never laughed at a russian reversal when there was a soviet russia to laugh about. apply this logic to your religion- when that union dissolves, see if you can remember if you were ever laughing with it instead of at it.