By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
There are studies linking laughter and humor to positive changes in people’s lives. Indeed, laughter and humor are strong medicine; they draw people together in ways that trigger healthy physical and emotional changes in people’s mental and physical conditions.
Arkady Raikin (1911–1987) was a Soviet stand-up comedian and variety-show entertainer—the most popular and respected Soviet humorists of the 20th century. From his home base in Leningrad (known today as St. Petersburg), he toured the former Soviet Union and occasionally went abroad. In 1984, he moved his comedy company to Moscow and reopened it as the Satirikon (satire) theatre.
In his comedies, Raikin deftly ridiculed bureaucracy, official rudeness and corruption, Soviet inefficiency, consumer shortages, political wariness, various black-market shenanigans, and other daily practices of the socialist Soviet life, but never Soviet politics and ideology. He used skits, monologues, and impersonations in his performances.
Despite the sensitive subjects and his being a Jew in an anti-Semitic era in the former Soviet Union, Raikin was celebrated both popularly and officially; he received the title People’s Artist in 1968 and the highest civilian award, Hero of Socialist Labor, in 1981.
Although he was born and raised in Riga, Latvia, Odessa was his favorite city in the Soviet Union. Odessa is a port city on the Black Sea in today’s southern Ukraine. It’s known for its beaches and 19th-century architecture, including the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater. The modern building was constructed by Fellner and Helmer architects in neo-baroque (Vienna Baroque) style and opened in 1887.
The culture of Odessa is a unique blend of Russian, Yiddish (language of the Ashkenazy Jews), and Ukrainian cultures and languages; Odessa itself has played a notable role in Russian and Yiddish folklore. The Russian language spoken in Odessa, likewise, is influenced by Yiddish and Ukrainian grammar, vocabulary and phraseology. As a result, many phrases sound inherently and uniquely humorous to Russian speakers and constitute a common theme of Odessa humor.
So, Odessa humor is a notable part of both Jewish and Russian humor (comparable to Brookline humor and speech patterns in New York). Since 1972, Odessa has been hosting the annual festival of humor—Humorina. For this and other reasons, Odessa was known as the “Capital of Humor” in the former Soviet Union.
In the early 1970s, Arkady Raikin performed in Odessa for the entire month. On the day of his arrival, he ordered a pair of trousers from Odessa’s well-known man’s tailor—Isak Shapiro. The tailor was honored to fulfill the order for such a prominent comedian. During the thirty days of Raikin’s performance in Odessa, Shapiro called the great comedian eight times for fitting his trousers.
Finally, at the end of Raikin’s thirty-day performance in Odessa, his trousers were tailored. When Raikin received his trousers, he noted with a playful smile, “Look, Shapiro, God created the World in seven days, and it took you 30 days to tailor my trousers.”
Then, the tailor squinted his trickery eyes, waved his arms wide open and replied, ”Mr. Raikin, look at today’s crazy World and look at these gorgeous trousers!”
Indeed, in today’s a socially divided and politically tense world, a touch of humor is a drive for peaceful reconciliation and social justice; small perfection is in the people’s doable reach rather than a hypothetical perfect World in the uncertain horizon.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
