Solzhenitsyn's sense of humor

Obviously, Gulag Archipelago is never going to get on anyone's list of books full of belly laughs. But there is a joke in it, and it took me years to get it. At the end of the chapter on different occupations the zeks were given in the camps, he says that there were only two trades they were never assigned to, the making of sausages and the making of confectionary goods. Years later, I finally realized he must have been kidding.

And he must have a sense of humor, to have come up with the Buddha's Smile chapter in First Circle, (Eleanor Roosevelt's imaginary visit to the Lubyanka), or the trial of Prince Igor for being captured by the enemy.

Also I think related to humor is his strong sense of irony. As when he describes the silly things that people were arrested for (using newspaper for scratch paper hence writing on a picture of Stalin, or carrying a bust of Stalin by tying a rope around the bust's neck), then he says "and only the invincible social structure of Socialism survived all these assaults". I think another great ironical statement is what he says about Stalin in First Circle, how he only trusted one man in his life, Adolf Hitler. (Probably in truth, Stalin didn't trust Hitler, what he trusted in was his own ability to know what was going on and to outwit Hitler, so he refused to believe the warnings of the coming invasion).