[terpsichorean]

Chernobyl, incidentally, wasn't an accident, another joke went. It was just a Soviet program to X-ray its population.

[not included in the article] Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, but Communism is the other way around.

Coming soon to and America near you.

[Atlas Sneezed]

I’ll never forget where I was when the most important world event of my lifetime occurred.

[Western Phil]

" The ubiquitous Trabant or Trabi, East Germany's legendary plastic car with its clattering two-stroke engine, was a favorite butt of jokes as well. Like this one: "A new Trabi has been launched with two exhaust pipes -- so you can use it as a wheelbarrow."

We have a friend from Dresden who owns one of these. When the wall came down, it was like she was released from prison. She drove her Trabant all over West Germany. It was probably a safety hazard on the Autobahn.

"Telling jokes was playing with fire," says Kleemann. The Stasi had 91,000 employees and a network of around 189,000 civilian informants to spy on the East German population of 17 million. It regarded every political joke as a potential threat. Anyone who poked fun at the representatives of the organs of state and society was subject to prosecution. "There were cases of people who were jailed, it was particularly bad in the 1950s and 1960s," says Kleemann. Here's one example about how that risk was lampooned: "There are people who tell jokes. There are people who collect jokes and tell jokes. And there are people who collect people who tell jokes."

The Dresden lady said that the best thing associated with the end of socialism was the end to the "einshauen" (the government spying on individuals).