{"id":27708,"date":"2022-03-03T17:33:13","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T16:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=27708"},"modified":"2022-03-03T17:34:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-03T16:34:05","slug":"have-you-heard-of-the-bald-hairy-joke-in-russian-political-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=27708","title":{"rendered":"Have you heard of the &#8220;bald-hairy&#8221; joke in Russian political discourse?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;Bald-hairy&#8221; is a common joke in Russian political discourse, referring to the empirical rule of the state leaders&#8217; succession defined as a change of a bald&nbsp;or balding leader to a hairy one and vice versa. This consistent pattern can be traced back to as early as 1825, when Nicholas I succeeded his late brother&nbsp;Alexander&nbsp;as the Russian Emperor. Nicholas I&#8217;s son&nbsp;Alexander II formed the first &#8220;bald\u2013hairy&#8221; pair of the sequence with his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In modern Russia the pattern is a frequent subject for jokes and cartoons.&nbsp;It is often used in political journalism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;Bald, hairy, bald, hairy, bald, hairy\u2014that&#8217;s how we elect our leaders,&#8221; my St Petersburg friend quips when I ask if she voted in the presidential elections. &#8220;Think about it: Lenin was bald, Stalin was hairy; Krushchev was bald, Brezhnev was hairy; Gorbachev was bald, Yeltsin was hairy\u2014and Putin is practically bald. Medvedev had to win.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>You can see a full sequence of &#8220;bald-hairy&#8221; Russian leaders <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bald\u2013hairy\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Vladimir Putin has been in power &#8211; as president, then prime minister and then president again &#8211; for almost 22 years, longer than any leader except Stalin. It is to be profoundly hoped that his disastrous war against Ukraine will encourage a coup against him. For the tradition to be honoured, his successor should have a good head of hair. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Bald-hairy&#8221; is a common joke in Russian political discourse, referring to the empirical rule of the state leaders&#8217; succession defined as a change of a bald&nbsp;or balding leader to a hairy one and vice versa. This consistent pattern can be traced back to as early as 1825, when Nicholas I succeeded his late brother&nbsp;Alexander&nbsp;as the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27708"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27713,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27708\/revisions\/27713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}