Making War, Not Love:
Gender and Sexuality in Russian Humor

Making War, Not Love: Gender and Sexuality in Russian Humor. By Emil A. Draitser. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. viii + 308. Index, bibliography. $45.00 cloth.

Emil Draitser teaches Russian at Hunter College in New York, lectures on humor in public speaking, and is the author of five other books on Russian humor. Making War, Not Love extends his sociopolitical and psychological research, originally based on underground humor, to sometimes controversial and even disturbing gender-related topics. The jokes and popular sayings included in this volume were chosen primarily to represent types and variants and to demonstrate textual richness, rather than for comic effect. Draitser notes that to some degree, comic value is culture-bound.

The stated purpose of Draitser's book is to explore, through content analysis of over 600 jokes, how Russian sexual folklore comments on gender relationships. However, the focus is narrower; it is, in fact, "a study of Russian masculinity as it expresses itself through humorous venues" (7). Draitser concludes that "the vast majority of collected material is male-to-male jokelore aimed at relieving tension caused by either unfulfilled sexual desire or failed sexual relationships" (255). He notes that one anonymous female reviewer was astonished that bawdy jokes might be told by older women in mixed company, underscoring the fact that at the time of the book's publication, public Russian female jokelore was of limited circulation.

Draitser sees roots to contemporary sexual humor in ancient village culture. Noting Joanna Hubb's Mother Russia (1988) and other sources, he sees a recontextualization, in Soviet terms, of matrifocal agrarian customs. He includes a chapter on the short, often erotic, mostly four-line folk rhymes chastushkas, which were developed as a separate genre in the 1870s and are still sung in Russian villages, often by women. Although acknowledged by folklorists, the first ribald chastushkas were published only in 1978---not in Soviet Russia, but the ÈmigrÈ press. Making War, Not Love explores the sobering implications of the extreme polarization of prudishness and obscenity in Russian culture, as well as that of a literature that idealizes motherhood and the cult of Holy Mother Russia in contrast to a deeply misogynic bawdy ridicule and verbal abuse that strongly associates violence (such as rape and beating) with expressions of passion or love. Perhaps emblematic of the deep ambivalence Russian men may feel toward women, the key collective word for foul language is mat, meaning "mother-related"(36). Draitser writes, "Today mat has permeated Russian life to such an extent, filling every pore of it, that one aspect of it---the degradation of women---is taken for granted, ignored even by many sophisticated members of the intelligentsia" (39).

Draitser argues that blame is shifted on women collectively for social ills and conditions that place women in a no-win situation, left by men who value a male-centered culture and not only experience "dominance anxiety" (7), but are also often powerless to take charge of their destinies either in public or private life. Humor is a means of both asserting male control and distancing oneself from painful, sensitive realities---such as impotence and female infidelity---as they wound the male ego. Male predatory behavior is approved in terms of male camaraderie and female lack of gender solidarity. Social male control is effected through sexist vocabulary and denigrating male/female relationships where women are seen as promiscuous or frigid, unfaithful, treacherous, stupid, unprincipled, vain, lazy, bitchy, and immature.

While the themes and motifs of misogynic humor are an international phenomenon, Draitser contends that the Russian versions are more savage and angry. Most significantly, he links the problem of alcoholism to his corpus. Not only do many of the collected jokes involve alcohol---such as those that see women as appealing only to the inebriated male gaze---but alcoholism also contributes to male anxieties about physical and social impotence.

Russian literature has its carnival literature tradition, an understandable interest in a society that has been repressive for so many for so long. However, carnival literature intellectualizes and sometimes even romanticizes in a fashion recognizable to Charles Bukovsky fans in the West. Draitser forces the reader's nose to the unfunny part of the comic, the dark side of Mark Twain's vision, which, even as we laugh, is no laughing matter. De facto matriarchy, in terms of burdens shouldered by women when men fail, has a heavy cost.

Aija Veldre Beldavs
Indiana University, Bloomington