Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Leagues of Laughter: War, Comedy and the Soviet Legacy in Russia and Ukraine

Leagues of Laughter: War, Comedy and the Soviet Legacy in Russia and Ukraine

Garey, A. Austin

Paperback

AnthropologyGeneral DramaGeneral Political Science

ISBN10: 1800088809
ISBN13: 9781800088801
Publisher: UCL Press
Published: Mar 8 2026
Pages: 230
Weight: 1.10
Height: 0.51 Width: 6.11 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
An exploration of how comedy has shaped civil society--and become a form of subtle political resistance--in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine.

Leagues of Laughter traces the evolution of a Soviet-created youth game called KVN (Klub veselykh i nakhodchivykh or Club of the Cheerful and Clever) over sixty years as students' nation-states collapsed, competed, and eventually went to war. Through cross-border narratives, the book shows how humor persists--and transforms--amid authoritarianism, censorship, and conflict. With insight and compassion, author A. Austin Garey reveals how laughter became a mode of resistance, identity, and cultural continuity in the long cultural context of the war in Ukraine. In addition to introducing a novel theory of tradition as stance to explain how traditions are reproduced and reinterpreted over time, the book offers a compelling comparative analysis of cultural production under political pressure.

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