Lenin's Wife and Mistress
joke · Soviet/Radio Yerevan ·
retold in 13 talks
Žižek notes Lenin’s specific term for the woman helping in the kitchen, which he uses to pivot to Lenin’s vision of post-revolutionary polite communication.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 12
“It's for a woman. Yeah, the woman who helps there in the kitchen, yeah yeah, that specific term.”
“Lenin was writing in—in his State and Revolution? 'Every that, how do you call it, kitchen, cuisine, my God, cooking lady, cook, whatever.' Okay. should become, you know, should govern and so on.”2:00:01 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 8pub. 2018-11-29 · 2:11:18
“Now I see I am in contact with ordinary people, workers. Fuck him, these were no workers, this was typical not even lower middle-class.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Cécile Winter2Leonid Brezhnev2Teresa of Ávila2Joseph Goebbels3Mahmoud Ahmadinejad3Mel Gibson2Saddam Hussein3Benedict XVI2
alongside works
Every retelling 12
Žižek notes Lenin’s specific term for the woman helping in the kitchen, which he uses to pivot to Lenin’s vision of post-revolutionary polite communication., illustrating Habermasian Lenin,ideology
2:00:01 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 8pub. 2018-11-29 · 2:11:18
Žižek notes the irony that Lenin planned for every 'cooking lady' to govern, but once in power, the Bolsheviks did something totally opposite, illustrating that historical outcomes often diverge from revolutionary plans., illustrating revolution-violence,ideology
Žižek notes the irony that Lenin, a revolutionary, lived in Switzerland renting a room from a middle-class artisanal family, yet wrote enthusiastic letters claiming contact with 'ordinary people, workers.', illustrating revolution-violence,ideology
Lenin, living in a small room with his wife and a middle-class subletter, famously remarked that this was one of the few times he met a 'real working class,' highlighting the gap between self-perception and material reality., illustrating precarious middle class,class identity
A Soviet joke where Marx prefers a wife, Engels a mistress, but Lenin wants both so he can lie to each about being with the other; when asked what he actually does, Lenin replies: 'learn, learn and learn.', illustrating Leninist,thesis eleven of Marx
1:46:56 XLII Sigmund Freud Lecture by Slavoj Žižek: Theology, Negativity, and the Death-Drive2015 · 1:49:50
Marx wants a wife, Engels a mistress, but Lenin wants both so he can lie to each about being with the other; when asked what he actually does, he says 'learn, learn and learn.', illustrating useless knowledge