title: Leagues of Laughter
abstract: Leagues of Laughter traces how a Soviet-created youth game changed as students’ nation states collapsed, competed and went to war. The game, called KVN (Klub veselykh i nakhodchivykh, or Club of the Cheerful and Clever), spread to universities across the USSR in the 1960s. It is scored by a panel of judges, like figure skating, but is played in school and university leagues, much like football. KVN rocketed to mass popularity, oddly, due to Soviet censorship. Young people could not protest in es