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영어

This paper attempts to resurrect the political and social circumstances of Stalin’s regime through the examination of political humors circulated among the people in the 1930s of Russia. Political humors were very effective means to express indirectly people’s reaction to the repressive power like Stalin’s. People in the 1930s of Russia contrived to develop their own ways of evaluating the policies and propaganda of the government. The political humors in the Stalin’s time first conveyed the images of the leader. Contrary to the official images like Lenin’s true heir and a great contributor to the foundation of the socialist economy, Stalin in the political humors was portrayed as a betrayer to the ideals of Leninism. Furthermore, the political humors had implicitly the critical understandings on the policies and propaganda of Stalin’s government. We can find through the contents of the political humor that the peasants tried to employ various menas of escape to the campaign of collectivization of agriculture. Also workers in the factory did not fully accept the industrializing plan of the Soviet Russia, the result of which led to the struggle against the goals of production plan imposed from above. And lastly, the political humors had provided some clues to the apprehension of Stalin’s terror. From the perspectives of the government, the terror was said to be targeted against “the enemy of people,” but the humors at the time pointedly grasped the mechanism of creating arbitrarily the enemy. The political humors in Stalin’s Russia were one of means of discharging the people’s emotion and attitudes to the government which did not allow the dynamic exchange of opinions between the two.