THE STORIES THEY TELL

Behind the Iron Curtain last week, the business of being funny had struck a depression. Moscow's leading humorous weekly Krokodil had been called on the Kremlin carpet for "not fulfilling its purpose." In Poland, a Satirists' Congress was told sternly that jokes involving sex and mothers-in-law were no longer considered funny, though humor could still be drawn from the petty bourgeoisie, the bureaucrat and the speculator. Elsewhere, however, people swapped yarns just as they had before. Here & there TIME'S correspondents paused to listen.

Athenians were regaling each other with the tale of an encounter between a U.S. Army engineer and a Greek peasant. The engineer was taking a sight through his transit along a rural road when the countryman rode up on a donkey. The Greek watched in mystified silence for some time, and then asked the American what he was up to. "Measuring the shortest distance between this point and that village over there," explained the American. "Well," the peasant muttered half to himself, "that certainly seems a complicated way to do such a simple job." "Is that so?" asked the engineer. "And just how would you go about it?" "Well," said the Greek, "I'd just let this ass loose and tell him to go home. He'd take the shortest road." "Oh," said the engineer, "and what would you do if you didn't have him?" The peasant sucked thoughtfully on a piece of straw for several minutes. "In that case," he said at last, "I guess I'd ask an American engineer."

From somewhere in Middle Europe came a fable that might have been lifted from the unpublished works of Aesop the Slave. A tiny rabbit was running out of the Soviet Union as though his life depended on it. He was stopped close to the border by a tired old dog who asked what all the excitement was about. "Haven't you heard?" panted the rabbit. "The Kremlin has decided to emasculate every elephant in Russia." The dog shook his head in mystery. "But I still don't understand," he said. "Why on earth should that worry you? They said nothing about rabbits, did they?" "Fool!" hissed the rabbit. "You don't know those people in the Kremlin. They'll emasculate me first--and then make me prove I'm not an elephant!"

In Russia, Berliners said, Stalin was celebrating "politeness week," and had called all Muscovites together in Red Square to tell them about it. Suddenly, in the midst of his speech, a sneeze was heard. "Who sneezed?" asked the dictator. No one answered. "Very well," said Stalin to Secret Police Chief Beria, "shoot everyone in the first row." When that was done the dictator asked again: "Who sneezed?" No answer. "Shoot everyone in the second row." Finally, when the smell of gunpowder had drifted away a second time, a timid character rose diffidently in the third row. "C-c-c-omrade Stalin," he stammered, "it was I who s-s-s-sneezed." "Ah," said the dictator genially: "Gesundheit!" and the meeting went on.

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