Q 13

PLAYBOY: How do you recognize a K.G.B. officer?

Yakov Smirnoff: I know what I could say, but I don't know if I should. [Hesitates] OK, it's a free country. Here's a joke they used to tell in Russia. They knew there was a K.G.B. officer actively working somewhere in America, but they didn't know how to find him. So they hired a private eye and, somehow, he got him the next day. They asked how he did it and he said, "Well, we set up people near every public rest room, and the one who walked out while still zipping his pants was the Russian agent."

Q 14

PLAYBOY: What can a Russian kid do to piss off his parents?

Yakov Smirnoff: Talk about sex, because the parents are not really up to giving out legit information. They tell you about the stork, so kids are not well informed. In America, you have advantage of having PLAYBOY. In Russia, there are no movies kids can sneak into and see what is going on. They have to learn in the streets. We experiment in the bushes, because there are no apartments unless you buy your parents double-feature movie tickets and take the girl home while they're gone. Otherwise, it's hard to make love when your parents are in the same bed. There's also no birth control in Russia. It's really bad. And abortion, seriously, is terrible. Girls are made to feel like their parents and schoolmates will know. There are no private doctors, so the clinic doctors must report her. Also, they don't use anesthesia, which is their way of punishing. This is true. Girls are made miserable so they will not get pregnant so easily again.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: What made you start doubting the party line?

Yakov Smirnoff: My father was a pretty open-minded person. Sometimes he listened to the Voice of America. During the war, he was in Bulgaria and Germany and he saw a different world than the government told us existed. Then, when I saw it for myself on the cruise ships, I became convinced. Also, I had a couple of friends who had gone to America and were writing to me what it was like. In order not to make suspicion, we agreed before to write everything opposite to what it was. So they wrote that America was a terrible place with no food, no clothes, no cars. And then I realized they were living in Cleveland.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: Are you purposely making Russia sound worse than it is?

Yakov Smirnoff: No. Sometimes I even try to make it look nice.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: Is the Russian government serious about taking over the whole world?

Yakov Smirnoff: Last time I talked to them, they were. That's the main line of the Communist Party. Since I was a kid, it's all I've heard. Nobody even explains why. It's just assumed our society is better than a capitalist one. When I came to America, I realized the difference. In America, man exploits man. In Russia it's the other way around.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: What's the strangest sexual experience you've had in America?

Yakov Smirnoff: I was in New York. On Broadway and 42nd Street. It was three in the morning and I was walking. A guy comes over to me and says, "I have a girlfriend for you." I didn't speak too good English at the time and I thought he was just saying hello. But he introduced me to the girl and she fell in love with me. Nothing like that had ever happened before. So she took me home and gave me this little thing and said, "It's for protection. Put it on and I won't have babies." Well, we didn't have balloons in Russia, so I had trouble to find where to put it on. But then I did and everything was fine. Then all of the sudden she said, "I want to change the atmosphere here, so climb up on the dresser." I did. Then she put a bucket of water next to me and said, "Sprinkle it on me like it's going to be rainy. Also, turn the light switch on and off like lightning. And bump your leg on the dresser like thunder." I'm sitting on the dresser, nude, doing all this stuff, and she's lying in bed, covered by blankets, saying, "Oh. Oh. I need a man. I need a man!" So I say, "Where can I find a man at this time of morning? And in this kind of weather?" But she was nice. I waited for her to call me for three weeks. But she didn't, so I decided, babies or not, I'm taking this thing off.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: Are there drugs in Russia?

Yakov Smirnoff: No. No upper or downers. Well, things similar to downers: bullets. They'll mellow you out. Drugs are five years in jail if they catch you. Also, they tell us in Russia that drugs will make our children look like lizards. So I didn't do them. I didn't want my babies going "Slurp, slurp."

Q 20

PLAYBOY: Is there PLAYBOY in Russia?

Yakov Smirnoff: No. No PLAYBOY. Just a guy playing with himself.