Jokes in the Soviet Union were not always a laughing matter. The most striking ones commented savagely on conditions in the country; their tellers sometimes ended up in the gulag.

That does not stop them from also being very funny, as Ben Lewis demonstrates in his book, "Hammer & Tickle." The jokes told paint a picture of humor as a way of dealing with the absurdity, poverty, banality and brutality of Soviet life.

The Sunday Times called the book a "marvelously original new study of the collapse of the Soviet bloc," while The Spectator praised it as a "charming, highly original, elegantly written and valuable piece of cultural history."

Here are some of the best:

"What is the difference between Stalin and Roosevelt?

Roosevelt collects the jokes that people tell about him, and Stalin collects the people who tell jokes about him."

"What were Mayakovsky's last words before he committed suicide?

Comrades, don't shoot!"

"What is the difference between life in the time of Jesus and life under Stalin?

Well, in those days one man suffered for all, but today we all suffer for one man."

"A teacher asks his class: 'Who is your mother and who is your father?'

A pupil replies: 'My mother is Russia and my father is Stalin.'

'Very good,' says the teacher. 'And what would you like to be when you grow up?'

'An orphan.'"

"What has forty teeth and four legs?

A crocodile.

What has four teeth and forty legs?

The Central Committee of the Communist Party."

"Why do Vopos [East German policemen] always travel in threes?

One who can read, one who can write, and one to keep his eye on the two intellectuals."

"How does a clever Russian Jew talk to a stupid Russian Jew?

By telephone from New York."

"A donkey is standing next to a Trabant. He turns to the car and asks it, 'What are you?'

'I am a car,' says the Trabant. 'What are you?'

'Oh,' says the donkey. 'I am a horse.'"