Event Information and Booking 
What was the relationship between power and laughter in the fascist and communist dictatorships of the twentieth century?
This workshop will examine why European dictatorships found it so difficult to dispense with humour, even though this risked subverting claims to total political commitment made by the regimes of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. Was official humour simply a tool for keeping the masses pliant, or was it shaped as much by the rulers as by the ruled? Was there a clear line between official, unofficial and subversive humour? Speakers will address these questions and others as they consider state-sanctioned humour in Europe, with a particular focus on Germany, Italy and Russia during the 1930s and 1940s.
Programme
Introductions and Chair: Dr Nickolaus Wachsmann, Birkbeck, University of London
The Soviet Joke: Tiny Revolutions and the Art of Survival. Professor Orlando Figes, Birkbeck, University of London
Laughing under Fascism: Comedy, Jokes and Ridicule in Italy 1922-1943. Professor Stephen Gundle, University of Warwick
German humour in the ‘Volksgemeinschaft’: the failure of National Socialist Propaganda. Dr Patrick Merziger, Freie Universität Berlin
Round-table discussion
Chair: Professor David Feldman, Director, Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London
Professor Jane Caplan, St Anthony’s College, University of Oxford and Birkbeck, University of London
Dr Julia Lovell, Birkbeck, University of London
Dr Jan Rüger, Birkbeck, University of London