How many Russians does it take to change a lightbulb?

In 1969, the Slovak writer Jan Kalina published 1001 Jokes, a collection of (mainly) anti-Communist stories which sold out within a couple of days. This was during the permafrost that descended on Czechoslovakia following the Russian suppression a year earlier of the Prague Spring. The ruling regime’s retribution was predictable. Listening devices were placed in his flat so the authorities could find out who passed the jokes on to him, and after a year of this surveillance Kalina was charged with slandering the state. He was jailed for a couple of years. During his trial the prosecution claimed, hilariously, that the bugging equipment in his home had been placed there by Western secret agents. ‘I never told that joke,’ Kalina said in response.

As Ben Lewis explains in this charming, highly original, elegantly written and valuable piece of cultural history, the best Communist jokes were often — rather like the Kalina story — straightforward reportage of real events.