Thread: to try

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

But don't confuse the noun попытка ("an attempt") with пытка ("torture, suffering")! Of course, both nouns appear in the saying Попытка не пытка, "There's no harm in trying (even if the attempt fails)."

There was a Soviet joke mentioning that.

Сталин (С) спрашивает писателя (П), "Почему вы не пишете мою биографию?" П говорит, "Я не владею материалом в достаточной мере, знаете я даже не пытался"; С: "А вы попытайтесь, как говорит Лаврентий Павлович - попытка не пытка"

Here the black irony is that the person mentioned by Stalin (Лаврентий Павлович) was his right hand man responsible for torturing political prisoners the regime had.