Soviet Union Introducing Glasnost Giggles

By J.D. Reed

"You are forever telling them ((local officials)) to go forward," says the fictional letter to Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, "but you never explain which way is forward. They themselves have no idea." That jest might not earn so much as a chuckle in a Johnny Carson monologue or an Art Buchwald column, but in the Soviet Union, where satirizing state officials can be harmful to one's health, the letter is a comedic landmark of sorts. Its appearance in the March issue of Theater, a glossy literary monthly, may mark the first time | that the name of a sitting Soviet leader has been invoked in a government- authorized publication to lampoon the country's leaden bureaucracy.

Trenchant jokes about the Soviet regime have been an underground art form since the early days of Stalin. But those with their wits about them kept their barbs to themselves. Comedian Arkady Raikin went about as far as any comic could when, in the late 1970s, he publicly poked fun at Leonid Brezhnev's bushy eyebrows. A year before Gorbachev came to power a Moscow comedian was banned from television for a year for making fun of an unnamed KGB general. But when Mikhail Zadornov, a Leningrad satirist and television personality, submitted his story to Theater, the editors apparently thought the mock letter was suitable to print.

Adopting the voice of a resident of a dingy town that Gorbachev supposedly had visited, Zadornov informs the Soviet leader how the place had been hastily spruced up by Communist officials before his arrival: "In those three days they managed to do more for our city than they had during all the years of Soviet power."

He goes on to detail the nervous overkill that precedes a Gorbachev visit. Not only do the authorities paint buildings along the leader's route, but then, because "someone said that you like to swerve off your planned course," they enthusiastically paint all the other houses in the city. "They painted the windows, too."

Young Communists vacuum-clean the streets, and workers paint green leaves on trees. Monuments are scrubbed with Yugoslav shampoo, and telephone lines cut by the Germans in World War II are at last repaired. Since Gorbachev was once party secretary responsible for agriculture, a committee of scientific experts is convened to consider "How many nipples on a cow's udder?" The answer: "It appears that there are four, although the cow was given a plan for five." Hard-to-get consumer goods arrive in shops overnight, goods that "we thought were entered in the Red Book," a Soviet compendium of rare and extinct plant and animal species.

"Of course, when you left, all the products disappeared from our shelves again. But during the time you were here, we managed to buy enough things for the next three years." Gorbachev's letter writer therefore invites him to return in three years and adds, "But even if you can't come, tell our leaders that you are coming. Then they will do something again for the people." The spirit of Gogol is alive after all.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Moscow