Word: krokodil
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...working on the development of an electronic traffic-control system. Meanwhile, however, consumer demands for cars are skyrocketing. Russians are so auto-hungry that they will pay twice the list price to those who win new cars in the state-run lottery. A cartoon in the Soviet humor magazine Krokodil shows a swaddled infant in a carriage, howling, "I want a car!" at the sight of the new Zhiguli. Even when the Togliatti plant reaches full production, it is scarcely likely to meet the demand. According to one estimate, even if Russia should succeed in producing 7,000,000 cars...
Holy propaganda! No sooner had TV's Batman and Robin resumed their camp crusading for another season than the Soviet humor magazine Krokodil published a humorless tirade calling them "idealized representatives of the FBI." The show, said the editorial writer, is attracting "more and more millions of children, teenagers and underdeveloped adults. Betmvenomaniya is raging in American schools like the plague. The games of children are becoming cruel. Batman is making the spiritual night of America darker." Gleeps...
...furtive figures accosted shoppers to hawk wares hidden in briefcases, paper bags and coat pockets. After striking a bargain, the hawkers disappeared into the throng before agents from the "Department for Struggle Against Swindle and Speculation" could lay on the heavy hand of the law. The trade, according to Krokodil, Russia's official humor magazine, which sees nothing funny in the situation: a brisk black market in privately and illegally made woolen jerseys, caps, scarves, mittens and T shirts...
Back to the Knitting. Soviet mills have boosted production, but both the quantity and quality leave much to be desired. This is what gives capitalist knitters their chance. In Moscow, admitted Krokodil, scores of underground knitting plants operate under the noses of the cops...
Sleuths of the Department for Struggle, etc. raided a shop operated by one Anna Lazaryeva, discovered $9,250 worth of yarn, 150 sweaters and $7,500 in cash; a few doors away a second shop was discovered producing 100 blouses a day. The operators, said Krokodil, suffer from no shortage: state textile-industry employees swipe huge amounts of wool from government plants, resell it at a tidy profit to black-marketeers...