Profile of Yakov Smirnoff on Famous Like Me

Yakov Smirnoff (born January 24, 1951) is, according to his own description, a Russian-born American comedian.

Smirnoff, birth name Yakov Naumovich Pokhis, was born in a Jewish family in Odessa, Ukraine, at the time part of the Soviet Union. He has been an art teacher in Odessa, and continues to paint. He came to the U.S. in 1977 and became an American citizen on July 4, 1986. He was a roommate of comedian Andrew Dice Clay and has appeared in several motion pictures, such as Buckaroo Banzai and on television. Since 1992 he has been a fixture in Branson, Missouri.

"America: What a country!"

The largest part of the humour of Yakov Smirnoff falls into two wide categories:

• Misunderstanding of American life and custom through the eyes of a new immigrant. For instance, reading employment announcements of "Part-Time Woman Wanted": "What a country! Even transvestites can get work". Upon being offered barman on a "graveyard shift", the remark "A bar in a cemetery! What a country! Last call? During Happy Hour the place must be dead."

• Bizarre comparisons between America and Russia. "We have no gay people in Russia — there are homosexuals but they are not allowed to be gay about it. The punishment is seven years locked in prison with other men and there is a three year waiting list for that."

He once told Johnny Carson, "You have such nice things in America. Like... warning shots!"

Subsequently, "In Russia" was replaced with "In Soviet Russia" in many of these jokes.

"In Soviet Russia"

Yakov Smirnoff's legacy is the "In Soviet Russia" jokes, which frequently appear in many online communities, in particular Slashdot (see Slashdot trolling phenomena and Slashdot subculture). The general form of the Soviet Russia joke is that the subject and objects of a statement are reversed, and "In Soviet Russia" or something equivalent, is added. A modern example:

How do you feel about tabbed browsing?

In Soviet Russia, web browsers keep tabs on you!

Or an apolitical joke:

In America, you can catch a cold.

In Soviet Russia, cold catches you!

All of Smirnoff's original "In Soviet Russia" jokes made use of wordplay that carried Orwellian undertones. For example, in the jokes "In America, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!" or "In America, you check out books at the library. In Soviet Russia, library checks you out!" both punchlines refer to systems of omnipresent surveillance characteristic of police states. The first joke alludes to video screens that both reproduce images and monitor the citizenry, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The second joke refers to the use of libraries as another official means to monitor or keep tabs on the thoughts of the citizenry and especially its dissidents, which is uncharacteristic of free societies.

As another example, in the joke "In California, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, the Party can always find you!", the second use of the noun "party" denotes the Communist Party. The punchline makes light of the grim Soviet reality that all citizens at all times were subject to the apparatus of the state.

In modern popular culture, "In Soviet Russia" jokes often lack any Orwellian undertone, and merely make use of a grammatical transposition to achieve some absurd, but apolitical, result.

It is also worth noting that at the peak of Smirnoff's celebrity in the mid-1980s, he did not say "Soviet Russia" — he said "Russia," as the Soviet Union had been around since 1917, was still extant, and showed no signs of imminent collapse. Smirnoff added the "Soviet" qualifier after the fall of the USSR, long after his fame had faded, to specify that he was referring to the communist regime and not the present state.

Occurrence of "In Soviet Russia" jokes on television

In a Family Guy episode, Peter Griffin plays around with his car's navigation system, and turns it to "Yakov Smirnoff Mode". The navigation system says, "In Soviet Russia, car drives you!". Later in that episode, it says, "Turn right at fork in road. In Soviet Russia, road forks you!" (The comment made by Peter Griffin: "Boy, is that getting old.")

In an episode of King of the Hill titled The Bluegrass Is Always Greener in which they go to Branson for a bluegrass festival, Bobby sells a Soviet Russia joke to Yakov. The joke is: In America you put "In God we trust" on your money, in Russia, we have no money! (Compare with Will Rogers' comment, "In Russia, they ain't got no income tax. But they ain't got no income!")

In the eighth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Crow T. Robot invited Yakov Smirnoff to lecture on the film Jack Frost, a Russo-Finnish co-production. Predictably, Smirnoff's "lecture" degenerated into a sequence of unrelated "In Soviet Russia" jokes: "In your country, you watch movie The Rock. In our country, we break rock in gulag." (Smirnoff was actually played by a member of the MST3K production team.)

In the Futurama episode "That's Lobstertainment!", Doctor Zoidberg does stand-up on Amateur Night at the Apollo. He makes the joke: "Earth. What a planet. On Earth, you enjoy eating a tasty clam. On my planet, clams enjoy eating a tasty you."

An instance of this joke format appears on The Simpsons television show in the episode "The Old Man and the Key".

The "KGB" incident

KGB-FM is a San Diego, California radio station that once used its call letters as a promotional gimmick (a reference to the name of the Soviet Secret Police and Intelligence Agency, KGB). Announcements were often broadcast in an ominous monotone with a Russian accent.

Smirnoff has said that while driving in the San Diego area, he once tuned his radio to KGB-FM and heard, "This is KGB. We know where you are." Hearing this surprised and scared him so much, he claims, that he nearly became involved in a motor vehicle accident.

9/11 mural

Smirnoff is also a painter.

He has frequently featured the Statue of Liberty in his art since receiving his U.S. citizenship at Ellis Island.

On the night of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks he started a painting inspired by his feelings about the event, and based on an image of the Statue of Liberty. Just prior to the first anniversary of the attacks, he paid $100,000 for his painting to be transformed into a large mural. Its dimensions were 200 feet by 135 feet.

The mural, titled America's Heart, is a pointillist-style piece, with one brushstroke for each victim of the attacks. Sixty volunteers from the Sheet Metal Workers Union erected the mural on a damaged skyscraper overlooking the ruins of the World Trade Center. The mural remained there until November 2003, when it was removed because of storm damage.

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