An exploration of how comedy has shaped civil society—and become a form of subtle political resistance—in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine. 

Leagues of Laughter traces the evolution of a Soviet-created youth game called KVN (Klub veselykh i nakhodchivykh or Club of the Cheerful and Clever) over sixty years as students’ nation-states collapsed, competed, and eventually went to war. Through cross-border narratives, the book shows how humor persists—and transforms—amid authoritarianism, censorship, and conflict. With insight and compassion, author A. Austin Garey reveals how laughter became a mode of resistance, identity, and cultural continuity in the long cultural context of the war in Ukraine. In addition to introducing a novel theory of “tradition as stance” to explain how traditions are reproduced and reinterpreted over time, the book offers a compelling comparative analysis of cultural production under political pressure. 

A. Austin Garey is a research scholar at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

List of figures
List of tables
Note on transliteration and transcription
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Tradition and change
1 Origins
2 Traditions
3 Ruptures
4 Continuity
5 Censorship and circulation
6 Signs
Coda: Humour and hope

Glossary: KVN terms
Bibliography
Index