Not funny!
All year long, we've been laughing at bureaucratic stupidity and the clumsy antics of pro-government activists and the "patriotic public." And for April Fool's Day, we decided to collect more of these stories for a good laugh.
You know what we discovered? That it's not funny at all—because we live here, surrounded by these stupid jokes.
1. The entire internet was amused by Voronezh teachers who fell victim to a prank by activist Vladislav Bokhan. Bokhan, on behalf of United Russia, sent a notice to schools demanding a patriotic event called "Helmet of the Fatherland." The teachers dutifully made tinfoil hats, supposedly designed to protect against NATO satellite radiation, and posted photos and videos of themselves wearing the caps on social media.
Funny? Not funny! Because these teachers are still teaching children, and the Voronezh Region Ministry of Education even praised them for their "patriotic spirit, high level of efficiency, and creative approach to any task."
2. The teachers from Khabarovsk weren't being pranked—they voluntarily organized the "Russia-DPRK" forum, where children danced with sabers to the march of the Korean People's Army and presented a report on "The DPRK Navy as a Factor in Deterring Japanese Revanchism."
We once laughed while reading the Soviet magazine “Korea Segodnia” – who knew that our own country would turn out to be North Korea?
3. The Vologda region has a very funny governor, Georgy Filimonov. The news about him is always more entertaining than ever: he's either introducing prohibition in a particular region, or showing off his portrait with Stalin, or rapping on stage.
And the residents of Vologda are not only not laughing—they're practically crying. And everyone is asking to rid them of such an unconventional boss.
3. Some rather amusing stories have been happening in the publishing industry lately. Books have suddenly started appearing with entire sections of text blacked out. For example, a biography of the Italian director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini, published by AST, appears this way—because the Italian's moral character is incompatible with traditional values and the LGBT propaganda law. And on the back of Lilianna Lungina's "Interlinear Translation," published by Corpus, a quote by Boris Akunin is blacked out because he is a foreign agent, extremist, and terrorist.
I wonder if Akunin himself finds it funny?
4. Valentina Matviyenko recently proposed reducing the admission of students from the regions to universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kazan. Because "where you were born is where you're needed," and provincials have no business in the capitals.
The funniest thing (or isn't it?) is that Matviyenko herself was born in Shepetovka, Ukraine, but went to Leningrad to study. She probably wasn't useful.
5. Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov once became so concerned about preserving military secrets that he banned photography and video not only of drone attacks themselves, but also of their debris, the aftermath, and anything related to them. The governor went so far as to extend the ban to the entire Russian Federation—though he was only able to threaten violators with the Volgograd Region's administrative code.
And now the 17-year-old boy who filmed the drone crashing onto the roof of a neighboring building is recording a video of an apology and frantically vowing support for the SVO. Which isn't funny at all.
6. Do you remember those quad bikers? Everyone, young and old, fought them zealously. Quad bikes were declared a Western perversion, "involvement in LGBT," demanded to be recognized as an "extremist movement," and even called for quad biker children to be taken away from their parents. The Duma managed to draft a bill banning the wearing of ears and ponytails. But they didn't have time to pass it: the signal was received that the dangerous enemy had been defeated.
Everyone is laughing—except for a teacher from the Moscow region who was literally hounded for giving children an assignment based on Turgenev's story "Mumu": supposedly it was propaganda for quad racing.
