The Russian guy never gave his dog anything. And yet, his methods were so tough and efficient that he taught the dog to speak and beg in human language.

Could also contain a nod to the patience and unending hope of the Russians under their "stingy" government but that's likely too deep and contradicting their infinite cynicism and complete lack of faith ;)

>methods were so tough and efficient

...

>infinite cynicism and complete lack of faith

yes, the joke is basically stating that as these methods can make a dog speak then any lesser task like forcing any human to do anything what the government wants can be easily accomplished by these methods, ie. resistance is futile.

oh haha, that's a good one!

Didn't work for me because in joke world it's perfectly ok for dogs to talk even without training. The joke needs to be improved to manage expectations more effectively. The violation of expectations is what makes most jokes funny, so expectations need to be set up carefully.

The default expectation is for dogs to not speak, also in "joke world".

See for example:

A man walks into a bar with a small dog under his arm and sits down at the counter, placing the dog on the stool next to him.

The bartender says, "Sorry, pal. No dogs allowed."

The man says, "But this is a special dog -- he talks!"

"Yeah, right," says the bartender. "Now get out of here before I throw you out."

"No, wait," says the man. "I'll prove it." He turns to the dog and asks, "What do you normally find on top of a house?"

"Roof!" says the dog, wagging his tail.

"Listen, pal..." says the bartender. "Wait," says the man, "I'll ask another question." He turns to the dog again and asks, "What's the opposite of soft?"

"Ruff!" exclaims the dog.

"Quit wasting my time and get out of here," says the bartender.

"One more chance," pleads the man. Turning to the dog again, he asks, "Who was the greatest baseball player that ever lived?"

"Ruth!" barked the dog.

"Okay, that's it!" says the bartender, and physically throws both man and dog out the door and onto the street.

Turning to the man, the dogs shrugs and says, "Maybe I should have said Joe Dimaggio?"

The variant of this joke for mathematicians (source: https://jcdverha.home.xs4all.nl/scijokes/1_12.html):

I saw the following in "The Knot Book" by Colin Adams (a very readable introduction to Knot Theory). The joke is attributed to Joel Haas.

A woman walks into a bar accompanied by a dog and a cow. The bartender says, "Hey, no animals are allowed in here." The woman replies, "These are very special animals." "How so?" "They're knot theorists." The bartender raises his eyebrows and says, "I've met a number of knot theorists who I thought were animals, but never an animal that was a knot theorist." "Well, I'll prove it to you. Ask them them anything you like." So the bartender asks the dog, "Name a knot invariant." "Arf, arf" barks the dog. The bartender scowls and turns to the cow asking, "Name a topological invariant." The cow says, "Mu, mu." At this point the bartender turns to the woman, says, "Just what are you trying to pull" and throws them out of the bar.

Outside, the dog turns to the woman and asks, "Do you think I should have said the Jones polynomial?"

That assumes that the speaking dog is a trick. This is hell. This is the afterlife. If dogs are there then they have souls. Id expect such beings to communicate as effectively as anyone else. My first read was that the dog was informing the devil of his mistreatment. We cannot assume that the devil was being completely clear as to how he would judge the excersise. The russian did not win.

Did you ever have someone parse a joke so completely that stripped all comedy from it?

Yes

If you want to take it there, my reading is that the (ordinary, non-speaking) dog was in dog hell and the Russian was its particular type of hell.

The story never gives away who won, if any of them. If Satan is taking the task in earnest, of weeding out the worst of them, of course the Russian lost and the German won. But, this being a very dark joke, Satan could have chosen to defer the worst of them to purgatory just for the heck of it.

It's a joke on scarcity of food etc.

No (availability of) shit to eat on most days > he doesn't have to eat shit. On other days shit is available but no shovels are available > he doesn't have to eat shit because there's no shovel to measure it/eat it with.

He knew this would happen because in Russia the food stores were more often than not empty and tools would be often "misplaced"/stolen.

He's asking about the training dog joke, not the American hell vs Russian hell joke.

Thank you.