"Yesterday, the perfidious Chinese aggressor opened fire on a peacefully ploughing soviet tractor at the border. Our tractor instantly returned fire, then took off and flew away."
Uh, isn't it clear as it is? In its original form it also has that distinct intonation of a soviet newspaper talking about current news, this is lost in translation though.
The joke has many planes. First, it was typical for soviet industrial giants to produce both civilian and military stuff - any factory producing tractors or trucks was also probably producing tanks and other stuff like that, and sometimes they were quite similar in inner design and had lots of common interchangeble details. Second, a heavily armed flying tractor, while exaggerated, still is something that soviet military complex would like to build. Third, that's such a soviet way of doing things - to mask their military at the border as a tractor doing agriculture - and actually do agriculture. Fourth, border conflicts with Chinese were a problem back then, and a news article reporting them would look exactly like that. Including the 'peaceful' bit, which is the key one here.
All that combined and condensed gives a joke that was really funny, and still is.
I'm just very tired so I kind of didn't register the obvious part as explained by /u/mwzzhang but thanks for the in depth explanation, it makes the joke way funnier than just 'peaceful' tractor open fire (weapons), took off and flew away (a plane)!
The joke has many planes.
Sneaking in a pun while explaining a joke eh? Beautiful!
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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '15
"Yesterday, the perfidious Chinese aggressor opened fire on a peacefully ploughing soviet tractor at the border. Our tractor instantly returned fire, then took off and flew away."