Reddit mentions of Hammer and Tickle

For those interested in this kind of Russian Humour throughout the modern day age of Russia I can highly recommend this book Its written in a fun style and has mostly interesting jokes and the history behind them.

For those interested, Hammer & Tickle is a documentary about Soviet/Russian political jokes. The director also wrote a book with the same title.

Tl;Dr Maybe this is too much of a meta-reccomendation, but I think for historical comprehension meta dealings are of invaluable worth.

For my bachelor thesis I did research on satire and found some interesting material, which I think is especially important for the 'structionalist' grand narrative scholars here who tend to forget singular impact. First of all, there is quite an amusing little book by Lewis, called Hammer and Tickle (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hammer-And-Tickle-Communism-Communist/dp/0753825821), dealing with the kind of humour that exists even during the most ardent of times.

Then you could continue on to a more in-depth book on what the types of criticisms are in Frye's 'Anatomy of criticism' http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Criticism-Essays-Northrop-Frye/dp/0691069999. Frye's book is some terribly harsh reading, but if you can get yourself to continue past the hardship of this, then there are a lot of insights to get from his arguing. What I especially like about Frye is that he is in himself a philosopher as were the ones we study through a lot of history.

When done with those just sploosh yourself in the archives of your local library, cultural depot, or university and try to find things that are out of the normal way. This will naturally open up ways that you would not think of otherwise.