
How Vladimir Lenin Became a Mushroom (2017) - sndean
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/lenin-mushroom-hoax-russia?
======
Aspos
I remember watching this "documentary" program on TV. Could not believe my
eyes. It was one of the most exciting, paradigm-shattering experiences of my
late childhood.

Central TV back then was the #2 authority, right after "Pravda". Anything
shown or discussed on TV was "official", there was no room for bullshit on
Soviet TV. And then, suddenly, comes this program, where Kuryokhin proves
Lenin was a mushroom. Lenin's figure was so much mythologized (there were even
few research institutes dedicated to Leninism) that nothing seemed impossible.
A guy which looked like a scientist equipped with complex diagrams and talking
about mushroomness of Lenin on central TV - at some point the "documentary"
crossed certain level of craziness that it became believable.

No other modern art performance, before or since, left such a deep mark on my
brain.

~~~
baybal2
>at some point the "documentary" crossed certain level of craziness that it
became believable.

Yes, you are nailing it down there. Before Goebbels, there was Pravda

~~~
yesenadam
This seems a reference to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie)
. Well, I learnt (just now from that page) that the 'big lie' concept
originated in _Mein Kampf_ \- Goebbels' later version was different. It seems
Hitler's version that was meant here.

------
weinzierl
There is another angle to this story that the article misses. I think the _"
Lenin was a Mushroom"_ story was satire on the many Lenin stories that Soviet
PR used to paint him as a great guy. These stories, modern legends if you
will, were sometimes so exaggerated that no one could possibly believe them -
yet no one could say so publicly.

Here is one example[1]:

 _" One example, which all Russian people know by heart – Volodya Lenin was
playing in the house and accidentally broke crystal graphene (crystal bottle
for water or drinks). He was afraid that he would get punished, so he lied
that he had nothing to do with this accident. But deep inside he was a good
boy, so he felt bad about it. And several days later he told his relatives
that it was him who broke the thing."_

 _" Lenin was a Mushroom"_ was just taking this to an extreme and that's why
people in early 90s USSR found it funny.

[1] [https://understandrussia.com/lenin/](https://understandrussia.com/lenin/)

~~~
Mediterraneo10
The "Lenin was a great man even in childhood" legend that I heard involves him
eating apples that his mother told him not to, and then later his conscience
nags him for it. In any event, Lenin was subjected to the same mythologization
as George Washington who supposedly cut down a cherry tree and confessed to
it.[1]

[1]
[https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-e...](https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-
encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth/)

~~~
weinzierl
I still think there is an important difference here that made the joke[1] work
in the USSR. I believe it wouldn't have worked in the US the same way.

In America, when children grow up, parents could have that talk with them
about how George Washington really was a great guy and how much they
appreciate if their children wouldn't cut down the cherry tree in the garden
but also about how this story about George Washington is just that - _a
story_.

I wasn't there at the time, so this is just my take on it: I imagine in the
USSR it could have been dangerous to talk to children like that and one way
out was to exaggerate the stories until the child notices what's going on. Now
daddy Sergei Kurekhin was doing that to the whole Soviet Union - and that's
why they laughed about it.

[1] I call it a joke and not a hoax, because I think hoax kind of misses the
point. I wasn't there at the time but this is my opinion: I don't think anyone
believed it, I think people didn't say so partly because they didn't want to
destroy the joke and partly because this was still the USSR.

~~~
the_grue
No, this is totally not how it was. People used to speak quite freely at home
(aside from when Stalin was in power, and even then).

~~~
Viliam1234
You can't speak freely at home when your little children hear you, because
there is a risk they will repeat your words in public, which can get you in
trouble. It's probably also quite dangerous with teenagers around; they may
get a wrong idea about appearing cool to their peers by saying something that
can't be say, and then get reported on.

First, you need to make sure your children understand the magnitude of danger
from repeating what they heard at home. That requires some maturity and
intelligence, but more importantly the idea that "there are important truths
that you can get punished for saying in a wrong place" is itself one of those
important truths that you can get punished for saying in a wrong place, so you
either need to approach this very very carefully or take a risk and hope for
the best.

~~~
the_grue
Are you talking out of experience or just theorizing? Because I was there.
People were telling Gorbachov & Reagan jokes all the time in their kitchens,
that was just a normal part of life.

~~~
Viliam1234
Experience. I was in the role of the teenager.

Yes, some jokes were okay, especially the toothless ones. Like, making a joke
about being poorer or having worse quality of products than the West was
relatively safer than making a joke about party members killing each other or
hurting random people.

It also depended on who could hear you, and what kind of a job your parents
had. The better job, the greater risk of losing your job for saying wrong
stuff.

Also, "speak quite freely at home" is more than just jokes. I am pretty sure
most people would not feel safe discussing The Gulag Archipelago at home.

~~~
the_grue
Well, I was talking about jokes. I do agree that people were more careful
about voicing serious dissent, but then who actually did that? A very small
handful of political activists, the rest just never went there, because a)
usually their friends and family already agreed with them about politics b)
everyone felt powerless to change anything c) everyone was too preoccupied
with survival in the tough Soviet reality.

------
geoka9
Modern Russian TV is full of crazy hoaxes that people are quick to believe.
The difference is that they are manufactured by the state at scale as part of
its "hybrid warfare" campaigns (currently in Syria and Ukraine), as opposed to
a lone prankster trolling people for fun. One could even say that Kurekhin's
prank was a wildly successful POC.

~~~
v_lisivka
My mother lost her mind recently. When I checked her youtube account, I found
that it's full of these Russian hoaxes. She watched them extensively for last
few years.

~~~
rexpop
I don't know whether to believe you. Can you give an example?

------
jackfoxy
> We don’t have in Russia, _or in the West_ , a situation where there are
> certain types of discourse or figures that are off limits for critical,
> ironic investigation.

The linguistic anthropologist cited in the article is wrong about at least one
thing.

~~~
rexpop
Who is off limits?

~~~
john_moscow
anything diversity-related

------
the_grue
The article doesn't do justice to the hilarious reference to the wave-particle
duality that Kuryohin makes when he equates mushrooms to radio waves. This is
the part that still makes me giggle when I recall this prank.

~~~
aasasd
“Lenin was a mushroom _and_ a radio wave.”

~~~
the_grue
Yeah, that is the only place where waves are mentioned. I don't know whether
the author of the article even realized that was a reference to the wave-
particle duality.

------
yesenadam
Haha that's awesome! Part I:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU)

As a kid I read a book which seriously made the case that Jesus was a magic
mushroom - the English archaeologist and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar John M
Allegro's _The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross_ (1970)

"Allegro's book _The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross_ (1970) argued...that
stories of early Christianity originated in an Essene clandestine cult centred
around the use of Psilocybin mushroom, and that the New Testament is the coded
record of this shamanistic cult. ...that the authors of the Christian gospels
did not understand the Essene thought..[that] the Christian tradition is based
on a misunderstanding of the scrolls. ...that Jesus in the Gospels was in fact
a code for a type of hallucinogen, the Amanita muscaria, and that Christianity
was the product of an ancient 'sex-and-mushroom' cult."[0]

Well, I learnt since that Santa Claus is a mushroom myth[1], and the _soma_ of
the Vedas (the earliest Hindu texts) sure sounds like mushrooms..

edit: Added last paragraph and..Ok downvoter, care to explain? Maybe you have
some good reason, but it just makes me dislike HN when people downvote for
apparently no reason but..well, who knows.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Allegro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Allegro)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross)

[1] I read about that in Scientific American 20ish years ago. Some interesting
leads here:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20american%20santa...](http://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20american%20santa%20claus%20mushroom)

~~~
selimthegrim
You might want to check out the Philip K Dick book “The Transmigration of
Timothy Archer”

~~~
yesenadam
Thank you, I will, downloaded it already. I've not read much PKD at all, but
read some of his VALIS writings after seeing _A Scanner Darkly_ and _Radio
Free Albemuth_ , which both seem about 80-90% autobiographical. _Radio Free
Albemuth_ strongly reminded me of the amazing movie _Equus_ (1977), also (you
could say) about the founder of a religion.

------
menudo
_tl;dr_ \- During (on the eve of) the decline of The Soviet Union, a
trustworthy news magazine program on state-sponsored television, hosts a
performance artist for a segment of his choosing, in which he spouts
absurdities and nonsense. During the segment, the performance artist deadpans
details of Lenin consuming psychedelic mushrooms in quantities which
ultimately transform Lenin (somehow). Everybody laughs.

Not exactly a hoax, but more a wink and a nod at the bastardization of the
media apparatus of a totalitarian state that is soon to be replaced, and thus
no longer requires donning the pomp and circumstance of official government
communications.

------
avaika
Russian rulers are pretty strange. Another couple of facts you probably didn't
know: Putin is crab and Medvedev is a bumblebee.

For Medvedev it's pretty simple: in his young years he sang on a party popular
song "Woolly bumblebee" from a popular movie and told that to journalists.
That was probably the most interesting part of interview and search engines
got flooded with queries like "Medvedev bumblebee". So the phrase became viral
and now everybody is aware of his true nature :)

For Putin it's even funnier: he told the journalists that during his
presidency he works as a slave on a galley. In Russian words "slave" and
"crab" are pretty close: "rab" and "crab". And the word "as" contains the
first letter from "crab". So there was a typo in the newspaper stating that
Putin works as crab on galley: "как раб на галере" > "как краб на галере".

~~~
walrus01
Reminds me of the Chinese anti-censorship memes of the grass mud horse, and
river crabs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse)

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
Ever heard of "Winnie-the-Pooh" [0] and "The Toad" [1]? It seems having some
memes referring to the head-of-state is a common pattern in countries with
authoritarian governments, since calling them directly by names is, at least,
uncomfortable.

[0] [https://www.vox.com/2018/8/4/17651630/christopher-robin-
bann...](https://www.vox.com/2018/8/4/17651630/christopher-robin-banned-in-
china-pooh)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moha_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moha_culture)

------
dang
A discussion from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874839)

~~~
r721
Another related one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952927)

------
tsukikage
Haven't you heard?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQR-
oI5PjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQR-oI5PjI)

------
aasasd
First of all, Kuryokhin was a brilliant musician for his time and one of the
few Russians known in the Western experimental-jazz scene, he played in at
least one concert with John Zorn and Bill Laswell (with Valentina Ponomareva
as the frontwoman). There's a great excerpt from a TV show where complaints
thrown at his band are so typical and predictable they're laughable (it's in
Russian though):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJTAhNhaaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrJTAhNhaaY)

But also, his bullshitting skills are unparalleled, you literally never know
if he's saying something he believes. There are sort-of “behind the scenes”
clips for the absurdist movie ‘Two Captains 2’—where he as an actor, and the
director Sergey Debizhev talk to different reporters by making up each their
own plot on the spot. There's a 40-minute TV interview where the interviewer
admits he doesn't know if a single true thing was said. In the second clip
from the OP article you can see how both Kuryokhin and Sholokhov had trouble
holding in the laughter while recording their “talk,” and that's just a part
of the full video.

The thing about late 80s–early 90s Russian media and arts scene is, it was
“anything goes,” a period of braindump after the suffocating atmosphere of the
USSR. (I barely caught the end of the time of change in the late 90s, and
still the influx of modern arts was like enlightenment and nirvana after both
stale Soviet standards and the sugary shitshow of the local pop music).

In this scene, a lot of talented people just did weirdest things they could
with the extremely low budgets, because the old rules were thrown away, and no
new ones were made yet. Sex, blood, shit, you name it, we had a lot of that,
mostly in abominable taste and quality. There are plenty of bands of varying
degree of absurdism from that era: Nogu Svelo, NOM, GrOb, Mango-Mango, the
parody of Boney Nem, etc. Pranksters and jesters became important in all forms
of media since they were showing people that life could, and probably should,
be a lot different. Kuryokhin worked closely with the gang of the Leningrad
“rock club,” but I'd say he was sorta ahead of them, being in free jazz and
modern-classical music and known in the West (playing on one stage with Zorn
in '91, come on).

A repetition of that experience is impossible unless we have another go with
the Iron Curtain. In the past thirty years, media and show business here have
settled a lot just like they did in the West, disregarding even the whole
oppression stuff. Now there are things that you can do to get any kind of
known, and making an absurdist band is not really one of them. (Though the
post-indie antifolk wave from ~five years ago was pretty good.) For my taste,
we're in dire need of fresh big time satire that cuts deep and hurts a lot.

Bonus track: “a true renaissance of shit” that is more familiar to the Western
audience, courtesy of Poorly Drawn Lines:
[http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/](http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/)

~~~
Fins
He has a record with Henry Kaiser as well.

GrOb started in early 80-s though.

------
baybal2
When I lived in Russia, I knew one promising youngster who unfortunately chose
to "come to the dark side." He himself was a hardcore marxist, but
nevertheless went on to develop himself as "political technologist," offering
his services to anybody ready to dish out a sum.

The two quotes from him I remember to this day: "with enough time and money, I
can make a city to vote even for a devil himself," and second "people believe
in whatever is easiest to believe, the bydlo did once believe that the earth
was flat after all"

~~~
Tade0
_the bydlo_

As in _cattle_? Charming man.

~~~
v_lisivka
Bydlo is Ukrainian word and it literally means "cattle". It can be used also
to describe somebody, who will eat his food and do his job slowly and
silently, withstanding any tortures, and doing nothing to help himself or to
help others.

Russians picked up this word recently and use it as synonym for "redneck",
often used as label for Ukrainians.

In this case, it means more like "redneck".

~~~
tetromino_
I am sorry, but you are factually wrong.

The word bydlo was borrowed into Russian (from Ukrainian, which in turn got it
from Polish) a very long time ago, and has been used in works of Russian
literature (Aksyonov, Strugatsky brothers, Sholokhov, Kuprin) through the
entire span of the 20th century, including before the revolution. According to
the Russian National Corpus, the earliest usage in Russian print was in 1869.

The word and its usage has nothing to do with Ukraine, and is not used as a
epithet for Ukrainians or any other particular ethnicity - unless talking
about specific Ukrainians (or Russians, or Americans, or whoever else) who act
like bydlo.

EDIT: I was wrong about the etymology. Updated.

~~~
v_lisivka
«Bydlo» has root «byt`», which mean «to live», so «bydlo» in Ukrainian
literally means «an animal, which lives with someone», i.e. cattle. Only
Ukrainian language still have calling form of words in use, so, if this word
is borrowed, it's borrowed more than 1k years ago, i.e. at times of Volyniana,
kingdom of all Slavs, before kingdom was split into parts.

For us, with more than thousand years of history, few decades ago is recent
history.

------
gcb0
Usually i love atlasobscura articles, but this one is very tiring to read even
on the first paragraphs still.

