Radio Eriwans: Nachtprogramm und Auslandsprogramm

In the 1970s, a whole series of books appeared in German publishing houses devoted to the phenomenon of the fictitious Armenian radio program Radio Eriwan, which supposedly answers listeners' questions. This radio program is a fictional phenomenon from the everyday life of socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union: under state propaganda, citizens were only allowed to state the official truth, so a form of resistance emerged among the people – humorous answers that begin with "In principle yes", followed by a long, often completely contradictory explanation that reveals the real truth.

The book Nachtprogramm und Auslandsprogramm, edited in 1971 by Michael Schiff and illustrated by W. Maier-Solgk, collects such anecdotes in the form of questions and answers. It is accompanied by characteristic drawings that imitate propaganda and newspaper iconography and give the humor a visual dimension. A typical example is: "Is it true that Ivan Ivanovich won a red car in the lottery?" – "In principle yes. But it was not Ivan Ivanovich, but Petar Petrovich. And it wasn't a red car, but a blue bicycle. And he didn't win it, it was stolen from him. The rest is correct.«

The title is divided into two program parts: the night program brings humorous topics from everyday life and the sexual sphere, and the foreign program contains political attacks on the Soviet system, on the unrest in Eastern Europe and on Cold War international relations. The genre continued its life in Spitzvig's magazine Sputnik and in numerous subsequent elections, becoming a permanent part of everyday Central European political humor.