Radio Yerevan / Rabinovich and the car
joke · Soviet/Radio Yerevan ·
retold in 10 talks
A listener asks if it's true Jew Rabinovich won a new car in a lottery; Radio Yerevan answers: in principle yes, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it, it was stolen from him. Žižek applies this to Marx: in principle yes his theory is still valid, but with multiple qualifications that gut the original claim.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 9
“In principle yes, it's true, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him.”
“Is it true that the Jew Rabinovich won a new car on state lottery? In principle it's true, just it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it, it was stolen from him.”
“In principle it's true, but the true proletarians are not proletarians at all, and so on, and so on.”
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
Will Self2Wolfgang Streeck2Recep Tayyip Erdoğan4Margaret Atwood2Bruno Kreisky1Didier Eribon1Garret FitzGerald1Ramesh Srinivasan1
alongside works
Every retelling 9
A listener asks if it's true Jew Rabinovich won a new car in a lottery; Radio Yerevan answers: in principle yes, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it, it was stolen from him. Žižek applies this to Marx: in principle yes his theory is still valid, but with multiple qualifications that gut the original claim., illustrating Marx's legacy,dialectical qualification,cynical ideology
A caller asks Radio Yerevan if it's true that Rabinovich won a car in the state lottery. The radio replies: in principle yes, but it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it, it was stolen from him. Used as template: 'Is Marx still actual? In principle yes, but...', illustrating Marx's continued relevance,ideological qualification,two new opiums of the people
A listener asks Radio Yerevan if Rabinovich won a new car in the state lottery; the answer is 'In principle yes, but it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it, it was stolen from him.' Used to describe the status of Marxism today., illustrating Marxism today,proletariat,gap between concept and reality
Radio Yerevan is asked whether Rabinovich won a new car in the lottery; the answer is: in principle yes, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it but had it stolen. Applied here: in principle capitalism is thriving, but with similar qualifications., illustrating capitalism's resilience,ideology,left behind
A listener asks Radio Yerevan whether Rabinovich won a new car in the lottery; the answer is 'in principle yes, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him.' Applied to the French election: in principle France defeated fascism with an outsider, only the winner embodies the very politics that empowers Le Pen., illustrating ideology as anti-ideology,false choice,French election 2017
Radio Yerevan 'corrects' a question about whether Rabinovich won a new car on the lottery: in principle yes, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it, it was stolen from him., illustrating ideology,French election / Macron,populism