If there is one thing my Soviet childhood taught me, it’s that subscribing to someone else’s ideology will always inevitably mean having to suspend y… - Konstantin Kisin

Perhaps most importantly of all, comedy is a by-product of the West and its virtues. Think about it: do you really think there’s much cutting-edge comedy going on in Afghanistan, China or Crimea? How about Venezuela, Libya or Kazakhstan? The answer is no. This is because comedy stems from freedom; it is representative of unfettered expression and open dialogue. To try and clip comedy’s wings is profoundly anti-Western—but then again, maybe that’s the whole point.

Are they really trying to tell me to pack my things and fuck off back to Russia?
From everything I am told, and everything I see on social media, I can only deduce that I would be better off elsewhere. Weirdly, none of the people who tell you how evil, bigoted, racist and sexist the West is ever move to any of the other ‘much better’ countries—but maybe they want me to?

The message I was given was clear: there is only one acceptable way of telling jokes and, if you don’t conform to it, then you should expect your career to die.
It was all very, very Soviet.