From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Yakov Smirnoff (born January 24, 1951) is, according to his own description, a Russian-born United States comedian.
Smirnoff was born in Odessa, Ukraine, at the time part of the Soviet Union. He came to the United States in 1977 and became an American citizen on July 4, 1986. He has appeared in several motion pictures, such as Buckaroo Banzai and on television. Since 1992 he has been a fixture at Branson, Missouri.
Yakov Smirnoff's legacy are the "In Soviet Russia" jokes, which frequently appear in many online communities, in particular Slashdot (see Slashdot trolling phenomena). The general form of the Soviet Russia joke is that the subject and objects of a statement are reversed, and the preposition: "In Soviet Russia" or something equivalent, is added. A modern example:
In Soviet Russia
However, the original context of the "In Soviet Russia" jokes have been somewhat lost. The original joke was, "In California, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, The Party can always find you!" The implication is that the latter use of the noun "party" implies the Communist Party, and refers to pervasiveness of the Communist party in Soviet Russia. Thus, to be done correctly, the latter part of the joke should be both 1.) different from the former part of the joke and 2.) describe a characteristic of Soviet Russia
In a Family Guy episode, Peter plays around with his car's navigation system, and turns it to Russian. The navigation system says: "In Soviet Russia, car drives You!". Also in that episode: Navigation system: "Turn right at fork in road. In Soviet Russia, road forks you!
There was also an episode of King of the Hill in which they go to Branson for a bluegrass festival and Bobby sells a Soviet Russia joke to Yakov.
There are also instances of this joke appearing on the television shows The Simpsons and Futurama.Occurrance of "In Soviet Russia" Jokes on TV
