"After World War II, different humor traditions came together in central and Eastern Europe, enriching the Communist joke which had already benefited from Jewish humor and the Russian 'anekdote.'" – Hammer and Tickle; the Story of Communism, a Political System Almost Laughed Out of Existence, compiled by Ben Lewis, Pegasus Books, 2009

It was a miraculous year, 1980. The USA beat Russia in Olympics hockey, Reagan was elected (l saw him in person during the Wisconsin primary), and Lech Walesa took over leadership of the Gdansk shipyard strike in August. But Ben Lewis says Communism contracted it's fatal virus a couple of months earlier when a Polish comedian named Zenon Laskowski hosted a TV special. For the first time, his Commie jokes reached a nationwide audience. He opened the show with a loyalty oath to the regime. The crowd repeated each line with roars of laughter. The first line was:

"We promise to be strong, though all we have to eat is potato water."

During Stalin's utopian age, a stooge of Stalin was talking to a peasant on a commune. He asked how the potato crop had turned out. "It was a bumper crop," said the peasant. "Thank God." And the bureaucrat says: "Hold everything. There is no God in the Soviet Union."

And the peasant says: "There are no potatoes either."

An elderly Russian woman was standing on her front doorstep and looking at her empty grocery sack. She says to her neighbor:

"I can't remember if I was going to go shopping or if I just came back."

A joke from the days of Khrushchev:

Q: What will the harvest of 1960 look like?

A: Average. Worse than 1959, but better than 1961.

Another question: Why do the Communists hold a rally on the first of May? Answer: To see how many people survived the winter.

A Soviet citizen returns from a trip to America. His friends shower him with questions. "Is it true that capitalism is rotting?"

"It may be rotting but what a lovely smell."

"Is capitalism on its deathbed?"

"Yes, but it's dying a magnificent death."

"Are the people rich or poor?"

"They must be poor. I saw stores full of food and clothing, but there were no queues."

Romania's Ceausescu was in a bad mood. He called a meeting and told his staff, "From now on, you're going to work for nothing, and if you complain, you will be condemned to death by hanging." A voice at the other end of the room says, "Do we bring our own rope, or is the trade union going to provide it?"

The foundation of jokes about Communist economics goes back two thousand years. When Christ was put on the cross, the Romans put a nail in each hand. Then they said, "Please cross your ankles. We only have one nail left."

P.S. That's where the hammer in "Hammer and sickle" came from. Communism is essentially a pagan religion – with sacred relics (the brains of Lenin and Stalin in glass jars), revered saints (Darwin and Marx), a Holy Grail (the elusive missing link of evolution), a madonna (Mother Earth), and televangelists – NPR and the mainstream media.

PSS: The doom of another false religion will be preceded by jokes and memes too, if you know what I mean. After the Six Day War, the Arab forces came to be known as "the Mets, with guns."