“Нам смех и строить и жить помогает”: Политэкономия смеха и советская музыкальная комедия (1930-е годы)

This article is devoted to the social and political aspects of laughter specific to the Soviet culture of the 1930s. Based on discussions concerning the new Soviet musical comedy it reconstructs the political economy of Soviet laughter in the analytical frame mapped out between the terms laughter and labor, laughter and goods, laughter and capital. The main thesis is that Soviet laughter of Stalinʼs époque works as a structural analogue of Soviet intense shock labor that allows the Soviet mass subject to cross the border between collective and individual, ideological and psycho-physiological, physical efforts and emotional relaxation.