Did you hear the one about the taxi driver whose brakes died?"I can't stop -- the brakes are gone," the driver screamed to his fare as they accelerated down a hill. "Then for the love of God at least turn off the meter," the passenger replied.Or how about the guy whose Zaporozhets, the notorious lemon of all Russian-made cars, stalled in a no-standing zone. "One thousand rubles," the GAI inspector said, sticking the driver with a parking violation. "Add another thousand and it's yours," the unhappy owner replied.Before glasnost allowed people to speak out without being targeted as an enemy of the people, jokes like these were the centerpiece of Soviet humor. All it took was a few pickles and a bottle of vodka to launch an endless string of anekdoty about everything from the lack of food in the stores to Brezhnev's stupidity.Sadly, in today's often humorless society, the art of the Russian anecdote has all but disappeared. But in a recent attempt to boost sales, a handful of people at the Avto, or Auto, newspaper proved that Russian humor is not dead -- it's just sleeping. When the Moscow publisher announced in March it was sponsoring a joke contest, they drew thousands of entries from Brest to Irkutsk.The competition was the brainstorm of Yury Smirnov, Avto's marketing director. With over half a dozen competitors moving in on Avto's turf, Smirnov decided it was time to broaden the audience of this technical trade weekly. Apparently, people still want to laugh; Avto street sales started going up shortly after they started filling the back page of the April and May issues with jokes."If a man brings the paper home his wife won't read the technical articles, but she'll read the jokes," says Smirnov. "And the following week, if the husband forgets to bring the paper home, she'll ask him where it is."As the contest rules specified, all of the jokes are related -- however remotely -- to automobiles. According to Sergei Zinovyev, who organized the contest, there was a wide range of categories, from the sorry state of Russian cars, roads and public transport to the predatory nature of the GAI. Drunk driving and women behind the wheel were also popular themes. There were even a few jokes left over from the days of the cold war, such as one in which an American driver shows off before his Russian counterpart. "I drive a Cadillac at home and a Mercedes in Europe," the American says. "At home I take the metro," the Russian responds. "To Europe, I drive a tank."The contest had two prize categories -- one for funniest joke and one for the most jokes submitted. But with such a vast selection, the jury couldn't decide on a winning joke."It was particularly hard to find a winner because the funniest jokes were too racy to print," Zinovyev says. They involved particularly clever usage of Russian "mat," or vulgarity, or made explicit reference to sexual intimacy.While no one claimed the winning joke, in the second category -- the number of jokes submitted -- there was no contest. Moscow's own Marina Lazareva was the indisputable winner, with over 700 anecdotes."Seven hundred and forty-three, to be exact," Lazareva said as she collected her prize Saturday at a reception at Avto's editorial office."Why do people tell anecdotes? Just look at our GAI, our cars, our roads. They do it to soften the blow," said Lazareva, who has been mentally collecting jokes for years. The Avto contest was the incentive she needed to write them all down.Avto's editor is already talking about publishing the results in book form. But first things first. Now that the joke contest is over, Avto has to find a new way of entertaining its back page readers. This time, they will try cartoons.Contenders In ComedySome of the entries in Avto magazine's jokes contest:? Arnold Schwarzenegger is riding in a crowded Moscow bus. "Are you getting out at the next stop?" asks the woman behind him. "Yes," Schwarzenegger replies. "How about the people in front of you?" "They are too," he says. "They just don't know it yet."? One guy says to his friend: "I lost my car yesterday." "What happened? Was it stolen?" the friend asks. "No. My wife got her license."? One driver asks another: "Why have you been sitting on that canister of gasoline the whole day?" "I'm trying to quit smoking."? Did you hear the one about the American, the Frenchman and the Russian who died in car accidents? Lounging around heaven one day, the three were discussing how they landed in the afterlife. "I bought a new car and was testing how fast it could go," the American said. "I picked up a pretty girl, and was looking at her instead of the road," the Frenchman said. "I was saving up to buy a car and died of hunger," said the Russian.