Lenin was a mushroom was a televised hoax by musician,
political activist, and a scientist Sergey Kuryokhin and reporter Sergey
Sholokhov. It was first broadcast on 17 May 1991 on Leningrad Television in the
“5th Wheel” TV show. It was a very popular program at the time, and had a huge
audience, which has been presented with a weekly program on investigative story
into Soviet history. It was sort of like a Soviet version of “60 Minutes.”
Surrounded by mountains of books and papers, the host of the
program introduced his guest: a handsome, young entertainer named Sergey
Kuryokhin. Kuryokhin was supposedly doing a scientific research
trying to understand the profound reasons of the October revolution. He
had gathered and analyzed multiple facts and documents, which previously
were not accessible for the citizens of the Soviet Union. Following the
successful business trip to Mexico, Kuryokhin has been able to disclose
publically the amazing discovery, which largely explained many historical facts
associated with Great October Social Revolution of 1917. He was there in the
studio in order to give interview on the fact that Vladimir Lenin used to
consume a lot of psychedelic mushrooms and eventually turned into a mushroom
himself.
Over the course of 15 minutes, he presents his original
research into the question of Lenin's mushroomness, drawing on Mexican cave
paintings, Carlos Castaneda and the science of mycology to prove his point.
According to Kuryokhin, this was the top secret behind the
1917 Bolshevik revolution led by Lenin.
“I have indisputable evidence that the October Revolution was the brainchild of people who’d been taking hallucinating mushrooms for years, and in the long run, mushrooms replaced their personalities, and they turned into mushrooms,” Kuryokhin said. “And when you eat very powerful, hallucinogenic mushrooms, he claimed — which is completely fake– they have the power to take over your personality completely and you become a mushroom. In short, I want to say that Lenin was a mushroom. Moreover, he was not only a mushroom, but also a radio-wave. His armored-car, the famous ‘bronevik,' served as a spawn while Lenin was a fly agaric.”
This absurd idea wasn't presented all at once; instead there
was a resemblance of logical chain of reasonings, facts and quotations from
various sources. An aura of plausibility was created using manipulation of known
and unknown data, pseudo-scientific style, and loose storytelling.
You have to understand that back in the USSR, the television
was strikingly different from modern times. There were almost no ads and very few entertaining programs. So, the TV
programs mainly served the goals of public education and, of course, political
propaganda. To the general population, thanks to the strict and formal approach
of the Soviet television, all the information coming from the screen was
considered to be “official” and thus trustworthy by many people.
Also, the timing of the hoax played a large role in its
success. It was shown on TV in the Glasnost period when many censorship
barriers fell and there were numerous revelations and publication of previously
concealed facts from USSR history, often with sensational flavor.
As a result, approximately 11,250,000 audience members took
the hoax seriously, even despite the totally absurd claims. According to S.
Sholokhov himself, in response to inquiries about the truth of the claims, the
person responsible for ideology in a Regional Committee of the Communist Party
stated that they were false, as "a mammal cannot be a plant."
Within a short period of time, “Lenin is a mushroom”
became the most-talked about topic of the day, and Kuryokhin was hailed as one
of the first creators of “media viruses” in the Russian media. According to his
wife Anastasiya, Kuryokhin made this theory up in order to prove that almost
anything, no matter how absurd or surreal it looks or sounds, can be 'proved',
especially on live TV.
Paradoxically enough, shortly before his sudden death in
1996, Kuryokhin, who never tired of surprising his fans and friends, entered
the National Bolshevik Party of Eduard Limonov.
Sources and Additional
Information:
3 comments:
how ridiculous! where did you get those figures of so many taking this seriously from may i ask?! people may have been behind the iron curtain for a while but they most certainly were not morons! my whole family knew it was a hoax and my parents found it hilarious when it was broadcast. what a pathetic attempt to make Russians look like idiots!
i think your inherently prejudiced article demonstrates your lack of humour and missunderstanding of Russia and her people. to be honest im not surprised. its not like this purposeful ignorance and oversimplification of the Russian psyche by Westerners has not been going on for many a year. my whole family may have lived under the iron curtain as did all other Russians that they knew, but they had no troubles in understanding that this was a joke. your pseudo intellectual analysis just demonstrates how little you people understand Russians or want to understand them. to you they are simpletons - a primitive culture in your limited understanding. i guess because its unacceptable (and rightly so) to pick on non-white cultures anymore, you have all found a neat little loophole in prejudice - picking on those freakish Eastern Europeans, eh?!
Well, I think I understand Russian humor better than most redneck Americans, because I grew up in the Soviet Union, I speak Russian, and I know Russia is not only Moscow and Piter, but also multiple small towns and villages. I remember how well people accepted political scams, imposed by the government.
People actually believed that Elena Bonner beat her husband Andrej Sakharov with dishwasher pipe. You probably know what I mean.
This publication, BTW, was based on multiple Russian posts, so do not think that it is a stupid Western interpretation.
The latest events, unfortunately, proved the point that Russians are easily manipulated and mystified quite well. Putin's hoax on Ukraine, supported by Russian majority, shows that clearly. And if tomorrow there will be claim that Putin is Superman, and Obama is a devil with all attributes, the percentage of believers will be much higher than you think.
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