For years, it was admired, but never understood. Now Professor Alexey Arkhipovsky, expert on the treasures of the tzars can say, almost without doubt, that this is the perfect and obvious companion piece to the Faberge egg.

“We know that Romanov Tzars habitually handed over the gift of the Faberge egg to their Tzarina over breakfast. This is a charming joke,” Professor Arkhipovsky told the Russian media. The delightful and fabulously valuable piece was found in a forgotten archive in St Petersberg, among the effects of a long dead communist general.

Now experts say they are not ruling out more linked discoveries, and are examining a huge burgundy ruby studded with tiny diamond “seeds” and severable irregular tubes made of cleverly enamelled gold. Professor Arkhipovsky said: “It looks like we are on our way to uncovering what you might call the full Russian.”

The flow of email jokes into Europe has been reduced to a trickle following the ongoing dispute between Russia, the world’s biggest producer of online humour, and the Ukraine, a major transit hub in the email joke network.

The row between the two states has left most of Eastern Europe without email comedy for the last few days, with Bosnia-Herzegovina suffering particularly badly. ‘The situation is intolerable,’ said Miroslav Lajcak, Bosnia’s Minister of You-Tube Comedy Clips. ‘Our office workers have been reduced to passing knock-knock jokes to each other on pieces of paper.’ There have also been reports of Albanian shepherds attempting to act out the clip of Adolf Hitler from Downfall with subtitles referring to a disappointing sports result.

In an attempt to break out of Russia’s comedic stranglehold, Ukrainian distributors are frantically uploading stupid clips of sock puppets miming to Abba hits, compilations of George Bush malapropisms and footage of animals doing amusing things that are normally done by humans. ‘Wait until you see the one with the guys slippers glued to the floor – priceless!’ chuckled Ukraine’s Cyber-comedy Czar.

Meanwhile the ripple effect has seen Western countries struggling with dwindling supplies. Ireland has doubled its humour imports from secondary producer Norway while Spain has opened up its electronic borders to one-liners from North Africa. Both France and Italy have announced emergency measures, introducing a joke-by-telex system using an emergency network developed during the cold war, whilst Britain has opened up the archives and declassified thousands of pre-war knob gags for general circulation. Germany remains unaffected.

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Political analysts were still reeling last night following the disclosure by sources within the Kremlin that Russia had only ‘buckled under pressure’ when reviewing group membership statistics on the social networking website Facebook.

‘We could cope with the threat of military action from NATO or pressure from the EU or the United Nations’ said a Russian official, ‘but when you’re confronted by 726 new members in just one day joining the group ‘Get Russian Troops Out Of Georgia NOW, PLEASE!!!’ then even glorious Mother Russia understands it’s time to sit down and listen.’

Russian military chiefs panicked when confronted by the concerns of ordinary internet users from around the world including ‘An Open Letter To Moscow’ signed by nearly two dozen History of Art students at Oxford Brookes. ‘Between them, the internet group members seemed to have a pretty good grasp of the situation in Georgia,’ said a senior Kremlin spokesman. ‘They knew it was somewhere East of where they lived and understood that Russia was much, much bigger than the former Soviet Republic. Their arguments in favour of a withdrawal were powerful and convincing. And when one of them commented ‘stupid rusian jerks!!!! get the hell outta georgeia!!!’ We knew we had little choice.’

However some Western observers believe that Kremlin claims to have listened to Facebook members is part of an elaborate smokescreen designed to impress Western Governments. ‘They were going to pull out anyway. The Russians just said all that stuff about the internet to make us think they actually had working computers.’

The countries of the former Soviet Union have agreed to reform for a special one-off evening of military posturing, human rights abuse and state-controlled oppression.

The fifteen countries stretching from Lithuania to Tajikistan, were persuaded to bury their differences and get back together to cash in on the current trend for 1970s nostalgia.

Ukraine, the country that first mooted the idea of the ‘Soviet Re-Union’ said last night: ‘We never thought it would really happen, but when we started talking to each other the old memories came flooding back and we realized we owed it to the fans.’ Belarus agreed, saying: “It’s great to be free, independent and democratic, but we can’t deny we had some good times together and it’ll be great to see the others after all this time and feel part of that huge terrifying Soviet power-bloc – even if it’s for just one night!’

All the members have been digging out their old furry hats and hammer and sickle badges and practicing their lines about glorious tractor production. Promoters were wary of backing the reunion until Russia finally came on board. Despite what Kirgizia claimed about the Soviet Union being a team of equals, as one fan said ‘the Soviet Union without Russia would have been like The Osmonds without Donny.’

Russia was finally persuaded to take part in the reunion after promises that it would be allowed to bully the smaller nations. The last country to agree to the plan was Tajikistan simply because no-one could find it.

However the planned reunion looked in danger last night when the reformed Soviet Union encountered a number of unforeseen copyright problems. ‘We’d been planning to do all the old favourites like ‘Destabilizing the Middle East’ or ‘Invading Afghanistan’. Trouble is, some bastard’s gone and nicked our act!’