Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman satirical poet Juvenal criticized a populace lulled into political inactivity by the promise of bread and circuses—entertainment designed to distract people from the state’s shortcomings so they wouldn't upset the status quo.. KVN began as a state-designed spectacle, too, and a Party-pushed youth activity, but officials’ goal was not to dope Soviet citizens with yet another opiate of the people, but instead to encourage young people to get involved in collective activities, especially the creative arts, so that they could become better communists.

Like aftershocks from Stalin’s kulturnost push in the late 1930s, in 1957 Komsomol First Secretary Alexander Shelepin launched the “aesthetic upbringing campaign,” a policy aimed at teaching young people how to “relax properly” (Tsipursky 2011, 349). Khrushchev agreed with this new focus on youth cultural development, according to Gleb Tsipursky, and titled a section of his 1958 speech to the 13th Komsomol Congress, “The upbringing of active and conscious builders of a communist society” (Khrushchev 1961, 35-36).222 The main strategy of the aesthetic upbringing campaign was to limit access to Western diversions (like American-style jazz) and aggressively promote Komsomol-run cultural activities. To facilitate this aesthetic training, the Komsomol issued an additional edict on “the march of Komsomol activists for further elevating the cultural level of young people,” which local Komsomol chapters implemented, presumably, in ways of their choosing (Tsipursky 2016, 157-184). In Bashkiriia, for instance, the Komsomol Committee instructed members to participate in clubs, learn to dance, watch movies, visit the theater and museums, read actively, do volunteer construction work four times a month, and, if they had higher education, lead an amateur group of some kind themselves (Tsipursky 2016, 170).

It is unclear how many young people adhered to all these extracurricular requirements. Nonetheless, the Komsomol leadership went to a lot of trouble to channel young people into clubs, and KVN figured among these. Thus, state policy encouraged mass participation in amateur arts in the late 1950s, a standardized KVN format spread across the USSR in the 1960s, and the format carried along with it a distinctly non-Western ideology about humor—one that has endured. And this was the plan. “Ideally,” Tsipursky wrote of Khrushchev-era cultural policy, “such young New Soviet Individuals would then use the leeway provided for activism from below during the early Thaw to organize normative cultural forms at the grassroots level” (Tsipursky 2011, 282). 

Many students did exactly this, writing Moscow to request guidelines for starting their own KVN leagues (Gal’perina 1967a). The Komsomol supported KVN, to be sure, and information- sharing between cells allowed it to expand. But this also would not have happened if students, most of them Komsomol members themselves, had not worked to bring KVN to their towns and universities.

Komsomol chapters dissolved with the end of the Soviet Union. But the complex of KVN traditions, personnel, and programs that make up KVN as an institution remained. The institution continues to structure emotional experience, in part through the aesthetics of humor that it promotes.

I don’t take institutions to be single sites or even single organizations, as KVN is neither of these. Instead, KVN is a well-defined tradition with an entrenched normative order. As Andrew Graan put it, institutions in this sense are “processes of normed behaviors that intersect in particular ways, and come to be typified qua institutions” (Graan 2016, 143, citing comments by Michael Silverstein). The interaction frameworks, or behavioral norms, of KVN have proved durable. These promote social connection, friendship among competitors, and, above all, joyfulness. Granted, no one in the audience will have identical affective responses. A joke may ring funnier to some than others. There may be those, too, that get dragged to KVN with friends but don't like the game and suffer through the entire performance. Likewise, not all performers will feel the highs that Nikita, Katya, Dima, and Alexander described. Not everyone can write material that earns applause. But KVNshiki consistently try, and they succeed more often than not. A social structure, made up of coaches, editors, teammates, competitors, and audiences, conveys expectations; people orient towards those community norms; and KVN games, even at field sites separated by 4,000 miles, create cheery, joyful atmospheres. People leave smiling.

The links between KVN and nation states today are more tenuous than they were when KVN could count on the Komsomol’s organizational and financial resources. Nonetheless, authorities create conditions that influence how organizations like KVN function. As we saw in chapter three, media restrictions in Russia and Ukraine led a group of former KVN comedians and editors to create an entirely new set of competitions, League of Laughter. Financial policies influence KVN gameplay, as well. In Krasnoyarsk, for example, the governor supports teams that have potential to advance to national levels. Krasnoyarsk also boasts several leagues for school children. Institutional resources like these influence game play more than money, as teachers organize competitions, schools lend space in auditoria and time for rehearsals, and older KVNshiki volunteer to direct school leagues. Each person who trains pupils to play KVN imparts ideas about the purpose of participation. In schools, these goals include self-development (working as a team, building creative thinking skills) and audience enjoyment (joyfulness, laughter). As Ukrainian education professor Olga Kol’tsova wrote, KVN can aid in “the socialization of children and adolescents, the formation of unity in collectives, the teaching of tolerance, socializing, the development of leadership qualities, and [the development of] creative abilities of the younger generation” (Kol’tsova 2013). KVN has proved a popular activity in post-Soviet schools for nearly sixty years. With the help of appraisals like Kol’tsova's, it is likely to stay.

The logic I’ve laid out might sound deterministic: the Soviets established norms for KVN, the extant institution programs people to privilege some Soviet values, and this results in conventionalized emotional experiences. Instead of determinism, I would like to think instead in terms of practice: doxic KVN standards of play lead to patterns in the way people narrate their emotional experiences, both as competitors and as audience members, both in Russia and Ukraine (cf. Bourdieu 1977). The Russian and Ukrainian governments do still have a hand in manufacturing joy, mostly through financial incentives and the lure of the primetime stage. But most people never make money in KVN. The game links communities through laughter, the only reward most competitors and audiences seek.

Our president is a comedian

“Putin, more than anyone else, spits on everything that goes on in America. I really like our president’s position,” Dima said. I spoke with Knight’s Move in December 2016, not long after the U.S.’s 2016 presidential elections. Dima continued, “Everyone’s just in shock that Trump won...But it’s just like United Russia here! Who beat United Russia? The Communists!” In an even more surprising victory than Trump’s, a candidate from the Communist Party had won the Irkutsk region’s governor's race in 2015, defeating Putin’s United Russia party. Laughing, Dima and Alexander did impressions of Lenin rising from his mausoleum, and Alexander exclaimed, “Lenin, we choose you!” (interview with author, December 3, 2016).

The conversation then turned to how Putin was simply a stud (krasava), walking into the State Duma with a soccer ball. “Putin even watches KVN,” Dima added. “Well yeah, and he was at KVN, too—at the 55th,” said Alexander. Putin had made a special appearance on the program commemorating KVN's 55th birthday on November 8, 2016. The president told the following joke during his three-minute speech:

...and a version [of KVN] started on television in the 1950s, VVV...Vecher Velselykh Voprosov, it was called. Well, time flows on, everything changes, and—new popular abbreviations appeared. I mean KVN. KVN is what I meant.

The joke was a reference to the abbreviation “KGB,” where Putin had worked as a foreign intelligence officer, and its transition to ”FSB” (Federalnaia sluzhba bezopastnosti), the KGB successor agency which Putin directed before becoming president. It was a good joke. It wasn’t his only joke. “He joked,” Dima said of the performance. “He had some jokes,” Alexander confirmed. “Our president is a comedian,” Dima concluded. 

Following another electoral upset in the spring of 2019, the new president of Ukraine is a comedian, too. Volodymyr Zelensky played KVN, at the highest competitive levels, from 1997 to 2003. He then helped found the production company 95th Kvartal, which produces humorous television serials. The most successful of these was the comedy “Servant of the People.” In this series, which ran from 2015 to 2019, Zelensky played the role of a corruption-fighting high school history teacher who becomes the president of Ukraine. From February 2015 until April 2019 he also hosted games in League of Laughter, a televised comedy competition very similar to KVN that 95th Kvartal created after the war with Russia began. Zelensky had no prior political experience, made few campaign appearances, and announced his candidacy less than four months before the elections. And he won in a landslide, with over 70% of votes (Walker 2019). His experience, and fame, as a KVNshik paved the way for that victory. He didn’t have to campaign because everyone already knew who he was.

When the Ukrainian election results were announced, the vKontakte page (the Russian Facebook) for the International Union of KVN, which is based in Moscow, posted a video clip of one of Zelensky’s old performances along with a Ukrainian flag emoticon and the text, “President, don’t forget your roots, remember!” The largest KVN Telegram channel, also based in Moscow, reposted video footage from former Ukrainian KVNshik Artem Gagarin's Instagram page that showed the celebration at Zelensky’s campaign headquarters when the election was called. The Telegram administrator captioned the post, “Situation: Diner." After midnight, the American Diner in Sochi’s Zhemchuzhina Hotel fills to capacity with competitors at the annual Sochi KVN festival. Many speak of the diner with nostalgia. The post, thus, referred to Zelensky’s crowded room of celebrating people, at least some of whom were former KVNshiki, but it also indexed an international collective of KVNshiki who were over the moon about Zelensky’s victory. It was as if everyone, in that moment, stood cheering in the diner. Telegram mediated the celebration of thousands, across borders, despite war.

Zelensky’s success may draw more young people to the activity, as presidential endorsement could increase the prestige associated with KVN participation. Alekander and Dima’s reasoning went, The president likes KVN, and this is just one more reason why we like him. Others may think, The president likes KVN—maybe I should sign up. In addition to appearing on stage, Putin wrote a letter to the participants of the January 2019 Sochi festival final competition, partly in commemoration of the fact that it was the 30th annual festival. Putin, here, stressed values he saw as important to cultivate in young people, including talent, creativity, friendship, and positivity. The letter, circulated on the International Union of KVN's vKontakte page, read:

I am happy to congratulate you on this final competition (gala kontsert), one dedicated to the 30th international festival of KVN teams. This festival joined together, in Sochi’s hospitality, thousands of talented, creative young people from Russia and other countries, people for whom affiliation with the friendly, cohesive brotherhood of the Club of the Cheerful and Clever has become an important, integral part of their lives. And, of course, it gave them the wonderful opportunity to work together on one stage, exchange positive experiences, and to meet their loyal fans, people who sincerely love the entertaining game called “KVN,” and who know well its participants and traditions—passed on from generation to generation. At the end of the day, former KVNshiki don’t exist, and many of those who became famous because of this project have not lost their connection to their native Club.

The letter validates the merit KVNshiki themselves find in the game. KVN is not just an after- school activity, according to the president, it is a “brotherhood,” one worth participating in, and one that lasts a lifetime. Public stances like these represent ideal young people as active, creative, and positive. Less than a month later, Putin addressed the youth of the nation in a speech to the Federal Assembly, saying, “your talent, energy, and creative ability are Russia’s strongest competitive advantage.” He did not limit the outlets for these strengths to the arts, though, instead encouraging students to get involved in new government-run programs, like “My First Business,” ”I am a Professional,” and ”Leaders of Russia” (TASS 2019). An active, creative life outside of school seems to be as important in today's Russia, though, as it was in the Soviet Union.