The Russian Elephant

Four-part report of a Stalin-era Soviet delegation to a scientific conference on elephants:

1. Classics of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism on Elephants;

2. Russia—the Elephant’s Homeland;

3. The Soviet Elephant: The Best Elephant in the World;

4. The Belorussian Elephant—Little Brother to the Russian Elephant.

—Soviet-era joke recorded in Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs (London, 1990), p. 123, cited in Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York, 2002), p. 504n.