Russian humorists

It may come as a surprise, but Russia has had some funny writers. Gogol is probably the champ, he was a big influence on Mihkhail Zoschenko, a satirist from the Soviet period who is also very funny. He was hugely popular; Stalin was a fan, but eventually banned him. The Master and Margarita is funny, and there’s a satirical pseudo-history called The History of a Town, by Saltykov-Shchedrin, that’s amusing and good.

I mention this because of all the Russophobic hysteria whipped up in the West. Good composers, too, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky… read a few stories by Zoshchenko, they are short and narrated in the voice of a man on the street who is mystified by the impenetrable Soviet political rhetoric. At any rate, let’s not have a war with Russia, nothing good can come of it.