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• 1 2022-11-25T09:53:26-08:00 1980s: KVN Returns 6 plain 2022-11-25T10:57:24-08:00

  Everything passes, but KVN remains
  It doesn't spoil or age
  But, honestly, the opposite
  And from year to year
  Let it repeat
  And it turns out
  That KVN lives
  And maybe it was always that way
  Something unnoticed
  And in that—all the trouble
  Turn the pages, and, in conclusion
  The same faces are flying...
  —Mikhail Marfin, 1987 Central League Final

  
  Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, implemented swift, dramatic reforms when he took the helm in 1985. As when a smothering fog begins to lift, censorship eased almost immediately. Banned books re-appeared. Newspapers published articles criticizing Soviet society. Topics like forced collectivization, Stalin's crimes, and the Cuban Missile crisis even featured in theater performances (Suny 2010, 484). Gorbachev wrote, "Democratic development presupposes glasnost—that is, openness, freedom of information for all citizens and freedom of expression by them...freedom of criticism in the fullest sense of the word" (Gorbachev 2000, 61).
  
  In this environment, talk about bringing back KVN began to "float around" in 1985 (vitat' v vozdukhe) (Shchedrinskii 1996, 39). It was no small help that the two youth editors for Central Television at that time were renowned former KVNshiki themselves. A.V. Menshikov had been captain of a successful Moscow State University of Civil Engineering (MISI) team in the 1960s and B.A. Salibov had written jokes as a member of an Odessa team (Shchedrinskii 1996, 39). On May 25, 1986, the first KVN show since the 1970s aired. Mikhail Shedrinksii, a St. Petersburg competitor who played in Top League in the 1990s, called KVN's return the "herald of glasnost," arguing that the funniest, sharpest pieces of satire were not cut from performances in this era (1996, 43). In the 1987-1988 season, for instance, a team from Novosibirsk criticized both socialism and lingering state control over free expression. In the first semifinals round they joked that capitalism was the same as socialism—"plus electrification for the entire country." Another team member countered, "We have electrification. It's just that there aren't enough 'plusses.'" Even more radically, this team satirized censorship, stationing a team member by the phone in case "the Party" called in with objections to their skit. The phone began ringing after the "plusses" joke. A young man answered, then informed his teammates, "They said that we can talk about this. But it's nothing to be happy about." All of the judges gave Novosibirsk the maximum of five points, proclaiming it the best skit they'd seen that season (KVN Top League 1988a). 
  
  
  
  Twenty years earlier, even mentioning the Central Committee of the Communist Party—abbreviated TsK, for Tsentral'niy Komitet—shocked the audience. In 1967 a team from Dnepropetrovsk replaced the words of a children's poem, "Mukha-tsokukha" ("Chirping Fly") with "Mukha, mukha-TsK-tukha." There was no commentary, no further joke about the Party (Janco 2013, 131). This pun, mild as it was, broke the first rule of playing KVN: "don't joke about the Central Committee." Given this history, Party secretaries at institutes in the 1980s "could not believe what people were allowed to talk about 'on television'" (Shchedrinskii 1996, 43). Yuri Isakov, a competitor from Ekaterinburg who would go on to write for a number of television shows in Moscow, including the contemporary cartoon "Fiksiki," described the 1986-1987 season, the first season of KVN's return, as like "a first love." "It is most likely very dear to us" (Shchedrinskii 1996, 96). One of the highlights of Isakov's second season was that Vadim Samoilov, leader of the Russian rock band Agata Christie, played as one of their musicians. In the third season, though, things started to change. Programs added slick production. Teams had sponsors (like the Bashkir Oil and Chemical Factory). "A time came," he said, "when a team had to have an image." He continued,
  
  This was a different time—a time of sponsors, and more and more it became possible to talk about things which were previously forbidden. It became a lot easier to breathe. It was during that season, when it was still interesting to joke about forbidden topics—but we were nonetheless allowed to do so to the max—that was the high point for our team (Isakov 1996, 92).
  
  Teams did not wait three seasons to begin talking about taboo subjects, however. The Odessa Gentlemen ended their introduction in the third quarterfinals in 1986 by thumbing their noses at censorship. They said, "As ancient gentlemen used to say, 'Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant.' In translation that means, 'Hello, censor. Those headed towards laughter greet the jury!'" Morituri te salutant, in fact, means "Those who are about to die salute you." The team thus declared their intention to tell edgy jokes, ones that may well be cut from broadcasts, in the name of humor. The audience grinned widely and clapped for fully forty-five seconds. Eduard Uspenskii, famous author of the Soviet children's series "Cheburashka" and "Three from Prostokvashino," looked particularly delighted (KVN Top League 1986). The same quarterfinals match featured another celebrity judge, whom Aleksander Masliakov introduced with the words, "This is a person that is, it seems to me, very "KVN" in his soul. Cheerful by nature. And he has undoubtedly proven to us all that he is very clever. Well, what can I say. Here is the World Chess Champion, Gary Kasparov."
  
  While teams in the 1980s satirized the Party, society, and even brought up sexual relations (also an untouchable topic in Soviet times) they worked within an institutional framework that promoted preserving the Soviet system. One judge in 1988 lambasted a team for joking about trivialities like sports. Satire, even if it ruffled feathers, made socially relevant statements, took moral stances, and worked to improve flawed aspects of everyday life. The judge scolded both teams in the second 1988 semifinal round, saying,
  
  I'm sure that tomorrow, in the papers that cover KVN, they will say that KVN has deteriorated. Before, both Moscow and Ufa gave more interesting performances. I don't think today's game was especially interesting—sporting...There are so many problems among the youth, problems among students. Today we didn't see any of these. So I'm just waiting for the final" (KVN Top League 1988b).
  
  The judge found the performance vacant because it had no larger social message. The 1980s, then, were a time when some extremely controversial topics became the subjects of jokes. But KVN's evaluation rubrics also reinforced specifically Soviet ideas about the role of entertainment in society. Soviet theorist Arnol'dov, echoing contemporaries, argued, "In today's conditions there is a striving in every collective to create an atmosphere of high culture and high Communist morality so that the collective's cultural microclimate should correspond to society's growing demands, and man's spiritual need for man" (Arnol'dov 1974,137). In this view, even leisure activities should advance kulturnost, learning, cleverness, morality, joyfulness and community (cf. Tsipursky 2013). KVN supported these core Soviet values despite critiquing the Party, surveillance, and censorship. 
  
  Stand-up comedian and former KVNshik Mikhail Zadornov touched on the themes of both joyfulness and surveillance in an October 2015 performance in Irkutsk. In the middle of a marathon three-and-a-half-hour one-man show, Zadornov related a Soviet-era practical joke. A friend of his invited four people to a cafe. Before they arrived, though, he paid the waitress and asked her to bring out five cups of coffee at exactly eight o'clock. Right before eight, with his guests assembled, the man leaned into the floral centerpiece and whispered, "Five cups of coffee, please." His friends looked on in horrified amazement as the waitress immediately appeared with the order. "Why do this?" asked Zadornov, laughing. "To live more joyfully!" ("Chtoby zhit' veselee!").
  
  Surveillance structured most aspects of everyday Soviet life. People learned to stay silent on trains and busses so informants couldn't overhear them. Friends discussed controversial topics in their kitchens, where, in theory, they could speak without fear. The practical joke indexes anxiety about hidden microphones, technology that could destabilize privacy even within the home. It parodies the mics as well, though, turning a frightening situation into the Soviet version of a MacDonald's drive-through. The phenomenon of kitchen conversations, and the need for them, was so widespread that songwriter Yuli Kim wrote a musical play called "Moscow Kitchens" in 1990. A sequence of scenes show people discussing friends and dissident icons lost to political violence. One of the darker stanzas features a man speaking to a mother whose son has been sent to the Gulag:
  
  Don't put together a care package, mama
  Your son doesn't need it
  It's the last time he'll see the sky
  Under a Kolyma moon.
  He doesn't need anything:
  Not tears, not a headstone, not a cross,
  And as long as there are people in the world
  They'll forget about him, forever
  
  Kim's lyrics remind us that saying the wrong thing carried serious consequences in the USSR. And it highlights the importance, during glasnost, of being able to talk—much less joke—about mundane yet pervasive forms of violence. This is why the Odessa Gentlemen rose to to rock star fame. It isn't only that they wrote funny jokes, it is that they wrote funny jokes about subjects people had been afraid to talk about for a long time; during glasnost, these got put on TV.
  
  Even the new KVN theme song rang defiant. Both the tune and the lyrics of the 1960s theme were changed when the show returned for the 1986 season, and it is still used today, both on TV and in many local leagues. It begins with the line, "Once again in our theater" (snova v nashem zale), underscoring the fact that KVN was back; it had triumphed. The rest of the song speaks to why KVN should come back, casting KVN as a social game devoted to making people happy:
  
  We're starting KVN
  For what, for what?
  So no one will stay on the sidelines
  No one, no one
  Though it won't solve all our problems
  Won't solve all our problems
  Everyone will be happier
  Everyone will be more cheerful
  
  Why play KVN? To live more joyfully. Teams pursue laughter (smekh); joyfulness; a good mood. And teams and audience members alike, usually composed of local friends and family members, seek community in KVN. Nearly six hundred people filled the auditorium of Irkutsk's Siberian Institute of Law, Economics, and Management in December 2016 to watch primary school students compete in the Baikal League Quarterfinals. The event came across as a mixture of recital and party. Most of those in attendance were relatives or classmates. Even more people, around eight hundred, packed into the auditoria of Irkutsk State University and Irkutsk State Agricultural University in the fall of 2015. At those events the audiences were primarily college students, the humor tended to be more sharp, and teams worked to create collective emotional highs through laughter. KVNshiki have maintained their commitment to kulturnost, cleverness, and (mostly) clean jokes for over fifty years.
  
  As Marfin and Chivurin noted, a majority of Soviet young people knew how to play KVN and often did so informally, much as people might play charades as a party game. Resuming KVN as a TV show revitalized the activity. But this was not because people watched it on television and suddenly wanted to (re-)establish it in their communities. In a number of cities, KVN never left schools, camps, and universities. When the USSR-wide system of competitions returned to the airwaves students already playing KVN in local games were poised to step in. Students brought sharp satire to the stage in the more liberal 1980s, too, which pleased fans. As Irkutsk French professor Igor Livant put it, "KVN was not a show, but a movement" (interview with author, October 20, 2016). Students transformed an approved format into a space for free expression. When I asked Igor what topics he wrote jokes about in the 1970s, he told me, "What I didn't like I criticized....I criticized America, [for example]." 
  
  Igor Livant and Eduard Chechelnitsky were both young men when KVN began. With funds from a Soviet state that dissolved, on a Komsomol platform that no longer exists, they helped build an institution that endures to this day, a club of cheerful brainy friends who still delight their audiences.