Given the disaster Russian history has been more or less continuously for the last five centuries, its humor is of the darkest, most extreme kind. Russian humor is to ordinary humor what backwoods fundamentalist poisonous snake handling is to a petting zoo. Russian humor is slapstick, only you actually die.

Ian Frazier (b. 1951) American writer and humorist

“A Strangely Funny Russian Genius,” New York Review of Books (7 May 2015)
    (Source)

Reviewing books by Russian writer Daniil Kharms.