[ptaipale]

In theory it was espionage or sabotage, in practice it was mostly ethnicity, i.e. person with wrong background at a wrong time in the wrong place. The bad luck of being in sight when someone had to meet his efficiency target in the process of purging any political opposition.

In this particular case, ethnic Ingrian near Leningrad. (Ingrians were the Finnish-speaking population in Leningrad oblast, i.e. people who had stayed there since Sweden ceded the area to Russia in the Treaty of Nystad ending the Great Northern War in 1721, and Peter the Great started to build St. Petersburg.)

Speaks a language other than Russian, confesses a minority religion, could quite easily be a spy and get information and then slip across the border. No real evidence was needed to put people in camps, kill them, or declare them enemies of the people. Stalin's repression killed hundreds of thousands in extermination camps where, by the way, Nazi officials visited to learn the trade of killing by hunger.

Today, the ethnic cleansing of Ingrians is all but complete; it was finalized by Finland allowing the Finnish-speaking population to immigrate in 1990s, leaving only some old people who are all soon dead.

To clarify, of course also ordinary Russians were thrown into this machinery of destruction. Another ethnicity just increased the likelihood quite a lot. Stalin himself was Georgian, not Russian.

The joking advice given to people eaten up by this machinery of killing was:

  1. Do not confess anything.
  2. If you confess, do not sign anything.
  3. If you confess and sign, do not be surprised.

Of course, in reality, upon entering the system you were most likely dead already.

[TheLarch]

The humor of oppressed Soviets, particularly Soviet Jews, is perhaps the best I have read.

This may be more modern, but one that I love is, "Once you've been in the military, the circus isn't funny anymore."

[Evgeny]

Once you've been in the military, the circus isn't funny anymore.

Now that I read it in translation, I can see the second meaning. What I thought originally:

- You get so dumb after being in the military, you cannot appreciate that circus is funny anymore.

Another possibility:

- Military is so ridiculous, circus is not funny at all in comparison.

[TheLarch]

I presume you speak Russian then? If so did you learn anything about the quotation? I Googled it just now and found... this page.

The best jokes defy explanation to some degree. A good example: the de facto definition of 'chutzpah' is, "To kill your parents and then ask the judge for clemency because you're an orphan." Not only is it funny, it's also the best available definition.

[type0]

I'm familiar with this, my family has some Ingrian ancestry, part of Estonia that is now Leningrad oblast. When Estonia became part of USSR before the WWII, land owners were "relocated" to Siberia, remaining population either fled to Finland or changed their names to disguise themselves as russians.

[ptaipale]

Another historical anecdote: When the Soviet-minded (i.e. repressive) Estonian SSR party head Karl Vaino was replaced by more liberal Vaino Väljas in 1988, people came up with signs something like "Elagu Vaino Väljas!"

This had two meanings: ostensibly "Hurrah Vaino Väljas!", but also "Hurrah, (Karl) Vaino is out!"

(Vaino is a name that can be either a first or last name in Estonian, but in Finnish it means "persecution". Karl Vaino's grandson Anton Vaino was recently nominated the Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office of Russia.)