Talk:In Soviet Russia

message: This article is currently an unsourced mess. —  MichaelLinnear 01:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As this article is about a non-notable internet meme, and there is no need for an article on a comedian's joke I redirected it to Yakov Smirnoff. The same content is already in that article. —  MichaelLinnear 04:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see Talk:Yakov Smirnoff#Split. The reason this article has it's own page was because it was proposed to be split. --AAA! (AAAA) 06:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: I removed the example section. A lot of those examples didn't make sense and strayed from the original format, and we already have an example at the top. I don't support this being a separate page, but if it is, it should at least have good examples instead of something that looks like it came from Uncyclopedia. --Piroteknix 22:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I question the example about Big Brother - the TV show was invented after' the end of SU. Ziko (talk) 09:39, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  And what is the problem? This a joke, colleague, not a historical statement. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:10, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Examples

message: This is a tricky one, because you can find plenty of sources online that cite Yakov Smirnoff as the originator and/or popularizer of Russian reversals. On the other hand, I've looked through YouTube videos and transcripts of his act, and quotes from his books, and I can't find any actual evidence that he used them! The one exception is a 1985 Miller Lite ad ("in Russia, Party will always find you") - whose script Smirnoff probably didn't write. I think this is a case of a mass memory that's simply incorrect - like everyone "knowing" that Captain Kirk said "Beam me up, Scotty". The Russian reversals have been around for a long time, Yakov Smirnoff was the guy who told jokes about the Soviet Union, ergo - he told them (and maybe even invented them). As far as this article is concerned, I don't know what the best approach is - the notable sources say one thing, but the direct evidence all says the opposite. Korny O'Near (talk) 03:25, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: ...and for exact this reason I deleted a ref to a dubious website of unknown authorship. Staszek Lem (talk) 03:42, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

text: This is WP:OR and comes close to being revisionist history.  Smirnoff, as one can read on his bio page, told many jokes that are functionally (but not syntactically) equivalent to the "in Soviet Union..." meme.  It was a famous part of his schtick and was associated pretty much uniquely with him and his act.  The Miller Lite advertisement, if that is in fact the only time he used the meme format, is a memorable proxy for all the other times and other ways that he conveyed the same idea where something innocent in the West is "reversed" into something oppressive in the USSR, introduced by the words "In Soviet Union/Russia...". 73.89.25.252 (talk) 00:47, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yakov Smirnoff did not use Russian reversals! 

message: This is a really poorly written article with no formatting whatsoever.
Is it really necessary to have a wiki page for this?
Orangewarning (talk) 14:02, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is this even doing here? 

message: In America, you edit Wikipedia.
In Soviet Russia, Wikipedia edits you!
--82.131.91.184 (talk) 14:21, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia 

message: This wiki, while basically an original research, but has a bunch of "In pop culture" refs. May be someone can trace them to reliable secondary sources, given the actual texts of the jokes. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:01, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  InSovietRussia Wiki

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 
The result of the move request was: Consensus to move (non-admin closure)  BegbertBiggs (talk) 00:38, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Russian reversal →  – formal, for IP, see below Lembit Staan (talk) 16:54, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 14 December 2020 

message: I'm not sure of the extent of sources on this, but the joke was told more as "In Russia" or "In Soviet Union" during its heyday in the Cold War.  Smirnoff added the word "Soviet" after the USSR collapsed and online quotations of his jokes mostly have the "In Russia" form. 73.89.25.252 (talk) 08:46, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "In Russia" vs "In Soviet Russia" and "In Soviet Union"