Lehrer's technique here was a common Cold War trope: one daren't mention any second-world achievements directly in english works, but cloaked in enough pejoratives they'd slip past the censorship of the crowd, while people who could evaluate for themselves did.

Looks like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobachevsky_Prize has suffered some endo-mathematical drama recently.

- the inspirational Danny Kaye sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXI2djKeerQ

- and, lest anyone worry about the exhaustivity of my case analysis, Bergman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIk_A115Src ("the squaw of the hippopotamus")