Russian joke culture includes a series of categories with fixed and highly familiar settings and characters. Surprising effects are achieved by an endless variety of plot twists. Russian jokes treat topics found everywhere in the world, including sex , politics , spousal relations, or mothers-in-law. This article discusses Russian joke subjects that are particular to Russian or Soviet culture. A major subcategory is Russian political jokes , which are discussed in a separate article.
Every category has numerous untranslatable jokes that rely on linguistic puns , wordplay , and the Russian language vocabulary of foul language. Below, L marks jokes whose humor value critically depends on intrinsic features of the Russian language. Usually two-liners spoofing the solemn style of the original TV voice-overs , the plot is resolved in grotesque plays on words or in parodies of the trains of thought and narrow escapes of the "original" Stierlitz.
Poruchik First Lieutenant Dmitry Rzhevsky of the jokes is a cavalry Hussar officer, a straightforward, unsophisticated, and innocently rude military type whose rank and standing nevertheless gain him entrance into high society.
In the aristocratic setting of high-society formal balls , and 19th-century social sophistication with widespread use of the French language , Rzhevsky, famous for brisk but usually unintelligent remarks, keeps puncturing the decorum with his vulgarities.
In the jokes, he is often seen interacting with characters from the novel War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. The film rendering of War and Peace contributed to the proliferation of the Rzhevsky jokes.
