HISTORY OF RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION in Humorous Verse

Sabrina P. Ramet
Scarith, 2014
114 Pages, 32 Illustrations by Christine M. Hassenstab
ISBN 978-0-9906939-3-2 Paperback

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About the Author

Sabrina P. Ramet is a Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, the author of 12 scholarly books, and editor or co-editor of 29 scholarly books. This is her fourth collection of humorous verse, following Pets of the Great Dictators & Other Works (2006), Cheese Pirates: Humorous Rhymes for Adult Children (2011), and Make Marzipan, not War: Crazy rhymes for crazy times (2013), all of them published by Scarith Books.  Her first novel, Café Bombshell: The International Brain Surgery Conspiracy, was published in 2008, also by Scarith Books.

Praise

“Marx wrote that ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.’ He failed to note that, with the right person, it can come around a third time….as doggerel. Sabrina Petra Ramet’s very mortal verses should be read aloud, even shouted, for they successfully deflate the somber pontificating and academic harrumphing that often dominates Russian historical studies. Besides, they’re riotously funny.”

—S. Frederick Starr, author of Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917-1980

“Scholars will explode with  laughter over the stunts of Lenin, Stalin, Peter the Great, and the other leaders-made-buffoons by Sabrina Ramet’s  off-kilter and hilarious interpretations of history. No prominent Russian leader is left un-pilloried, no Soviet ideologue left in quiet repose. And no reader is left with funny-bone unshattered by uncontrollable laugher over history’s vagaries.”

—Jerry G. Pankhurst, co-editor of Understanding Soviet Society

“Sabrina Ramet’s collection reads as though Mother Goose, Lewis Carroll and the Cat in the Hat translated a course on Soviet history taught by Mel Brooks into light verse. Each piece relieves the usual solemnity of the subject with a welcome touch of the absurd.”

—Thomas F. Remington, author of Presidential Decrees in Russia:  A Comparative Perspective

“It is a real pleasure to read this iconoclastic book of verse that parodies the Russian ruling class from the Czars to Putin.”

—Robert O. Freedman, author of Moscow and the Middle East