21 ms·

Lenin was a mushroom

574 points by Smaug123 10y ago

StavrosK 10y ago
Does anyone know the argument chain? I'm curious how someone made this outlandish claim sound plausible.
- tossaway1 10y ago
  Was thinking the same thing. That seems like a big omission from the article unless the chain was just some sort of incoherent meandering rant...
  - jarman 10y ago
    Most coherent argument was vague similarity of iconic "Lenin speaks from armored car" image (http://klin-demianovo.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/prizyvvogdja.jpg http://klin-demianovo.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/prizyvvo...) with mycelium (car) and fruit body (Lenin) >some sort of incoherent meandering rant That was the point: total absurdity told with total seriousness.
- gchp 10y ago
  > I'm curious how someone made this outlandish claim sound plausible. From the article: > Soviet television had, up to that point, been regarded by its audience as conservative in style and content. As a result, a large number of Soviet citizens (one estimate puts the number at 11,250,000 audience members) took the deadpan "interview" at face value, in spite of the absurd claims presented. I guess this had something to do with it? If people were used to TV being a certain way, and this "interview" was presented in the same way, then it would seem reasonable that it would be taken up in the same was as every other. Nothing (aside from content) made it stand out from other shows. Saying that, the claim is crazy, and it does seem strange that it was seemingly accepted as truth. I wonder how a similar stunt could be attempted today, and what the reaction would be...
  - icen 10y ago
    For a western analogue, try the BBC's spaghetti plantations.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      In Sweden we had the Colour TV Stocking http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/instant_color_tv http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/instant_color_tv
    - vermontdevil 10y ago
      I was going to post that too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax Loved this one as well.
    - VLM 10y ago
      or political correctness, as typically indoctrinated in school.
      - kodfodrasz 10y ago
        saying such things to this particular audience will result in massive downvotes.
        boomlinde 10y ago
        With less variation it seems to result in someone complaining about their imaginary persecution.
    - Rexxar 10y ago
      They should have tried with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_squash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_squash
  - dottedmag 10y ago
    TV propaganda in contemporary Russia works pretty well, so TV is still seen as an authority. It does not help that there are no large TV stations anymore in Russia that are not state-owned (openly or covertly).
- azeirah 10y ago
  Argument chain is mostly irrelevant here, people who fall for this simply believe anything who pretends to be an authority. Heck, I know for one that I /could/ believe something like this. A friend of mine once convinced me that both wheels of a bicycle rotate into the opposite direction, just to test my gullibility. I totally fell for it, even though we were on the bike at that very moment. I could've easily checked or reasoned that it didn't make any sense whatsoever.
  - alister 10y ago
    > wheels of a bicycle rotate into the opposite direction Your example reminded me that on a very rare occasion something that sounds stupid and counter-intuitive is true: A train wheel always has some point on it that is traveling backwards when the train is moving forward. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? If the train is moving forward, then all points on the train are moving forward. How could it be otherwise? This is very difficult to explain without a diagram: https://books.google.ca/books?id=SiviAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=train+wheel+travels+backward++prolate+cycloid&source=bl&ots=E5JpPwNEcT&sig=tAzwZA1jY4cLsKv7l8DDre97FbY&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=train%20wheel%20travels%20backward%20%20prolate%20cycloid&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=SiviAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA143&lpg=P...
    - deleted 10y ago
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    - OscarCunningham 10y ago
      I think the thing with the train wheels is sort of obvious once you see that it only works because part of the wheel overhangs the rail. The axle of the wheel is moving forwards, and the bit in contact with the track is stationary, so the bit further out than that is going backwards.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      I don't think it's that difficult to explain. The part under the track, the "flange" goes backwards. The part exactly on the track is not moving at all, same as a car (or any other) wheel. This is also pretty obvious when you consider that if the wheel was turning in relation to the ground, it would be skidding.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  This was very very early post-Soviet TV. Soviet TV had around 6 channels and everything on them was always very very bland and was supposed to be accepted outright it not believed. Kind of gets you after 30 years of watching. And then boom, and you have "Lenin is a Mushroom". I believe some confusion was genuine.
- anonymfus 10y ago
  It was more like a network of connections than a chain.
- 100ideas 10y ago
  "Every revolution, he argued, is indeed an impressive visual spectacle. Although we usually assume that visual representations of a revolution happen later, after the events have already taken place, Kurekhin argued that revolutions are simply too spectacular to happen on their own. Some- one “first [has] to visualize certain images and later attempt to reproduce them in reality.” During a recent visit to Mexico, he continued, he had seen frescos that depicted the Mexican revolution of the early twentieth century in a style identical to the one used for the Russian Bolshevik revo- lution: “the same exhausted people, armed with primitive tools of labor, overthrowing some rulers.” In order for revolutionary leaders in both places to have imagined these events in a similar manner, their minds must surely have been sub- jected to similar influences. In Mexico, the source of influence is clear. During ritualistic ceremonies, Kurekhin explained, the native peoples routinely used drinks prepared from Lophophora Williamsii or peyote— a Mexican cactus with strong psychotropic properties.2 Although Mexican cacti do not grow in Russia, Kurekhin noted, Russian forests do have an abundance of similar hallucinogens: mushrooms, most prominently the fly agaric mushroom (mukhomor).3 These mushrooms, he claimed, induce the same effects as the Mexican cacti: “people see absolutely incredible pictures very vividly and colorfully” and “enormous scenes of great events and revolutions fly before your eyes.” Building on this premise, Kurekhin began to formulate his famous thesis: “Reading the correspondence between [Vladimir] Lenin and [Iosif] Stalin I came across one phrase: ‘Yesterday I ate too many mush- rooms, but I felt great.’” Bolshevik leaders ate a lot of mushrooms, Kure- khin mused, and some of them surely had hallucinogenic properties. If consumed for many years, these mushrooms can permanently change an individual’s personality. Indeed, Kurekhin continued in an unwaver- ing scholarly tone, “I have absolutely irrefutable proof that the October revolution was carried out by people who had been consuming certain mushrooms for many years. And these mushrooms, in the process of be- ing consumed by these people, had displaced their personalities. These people were turning into mushrooms. In other words, I simply want to say that Lenin was a mushroom.” A Parasite from Outer Space:: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom Alexei Yurchak Slavic Review Vol. 70, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 307-333 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70....
- avdicius 10y ago
  There was no valid arguments. Just bogus claims interspersed with irrelevant quotes and a pretence of authority.
- krick 10y ago
  I am not sure if telling it second-handedly would make any sense. Actually, even watching it translated to english hardly would be the same experience. Basically, to any intelligent person it was an obvious joke, but quite a good one. The most powerful part of it wasn't what he was telling, actually, but how he was doing it: you know, some sane-looking person, a fluent, eloquent speaker, is telling something so ridiculous so seriously, that you might even start to question what is true anyway. He uses some clever words, pseudo-scientific side-notes, mis-interpreted quotes, and all the time he looks deadly serious, repeatedly asking the audience: "You see what's going on here? It's absolutely unbelievable!" To summarize it, it was something like this: he persuades you, that Lenin was heavily abusing psychodelic mushrooms, then, going through some pseudo-scientific gibberish makes a claim, that heavy use of mushrooms led to that a mushroom basically displaced human consciousness, then, by making some random observations "supporting" his claim, makes the statement "Lenin became a mushroom" more and more literal. Anyway, I would argue that it has nothing to do with Soviet propaganda and such: it was a great performance, but not so different in it's nature from a kind of reasoning in the very modern western propaganda or quasi-documental movies about aliens and such. Only it was mockingly exaggerated on purpose.
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maheart 10y ago
Haha, hilarious, thanks for sharing. I had to see this for myself. Source: Video, part1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU Video, part2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExXDxpBFFR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExXDxpBFFR0 The "revelation" occurs at 2m36s: https://youtu.be/ExXDxpBFFR0?t=156 https://youtu.be/ExXDxpBFFR0?t=156
- leni536 10y ago
  "Furthermore, he was not only a mushroom, but also a radio wave."
- anonymfus 10y ago
  That's a very short version. I have a Lenin-grib.Sergey.Kuryohin.1991.avi with length of 1:33:11 on my PC.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Care to upload it? Since it was on Soviet television there isn't a copyright issue.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
      Wikipedia links to this page with an hour-long programme: http://www.teterin.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=323&Itemid=158 http://www.teterin.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view... But it's not subtitled.
    - anonymfus 10y ago
      Pretty sure that broadcasting on soviet television does not remove copyright protection from the work. But there are many other almost complete versions on YT, so I uploaded it anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dp4H88ujY4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dp4H88ujY4 Also I see that owners of 4 music compositions in it will monetize it: https://i.redd.it/otijgsg8du4x.png https://i.redd.it/otijgsg8du4x.png
quantumhobbit 10y ago
"one of the top regional functionaries stated that "Lenin could not have been a mushroom" because "a mammal can not be a plant."" I love the the logic here. As though "Lenin was a bottle nose dolphin" would have been more plausible. Also did the Soviets have the same taxonomy as the west, meaning mushrooms would be fungi and not plants?
- ajuc 10y ago
  It's great but it's not a proof, because a mushroom isn't a plant.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  Functionaries were as clueless about taxonomy as about anything else.
- oblio 10y ago
  Go out on the street and ask 3-4 regular passers-by what "taxonomy" means :)
  - jerf 10y ago
    I think the question is about the cultural taxonomy, not the scientific one. For instance, culturally, tomatoes are often a vegetable in the United States, but botanically they're a berry and therefore a fruit. A culture could either treat fungus as in the "plant" category or not in the "plant" category and both would be culturally reasonable. (It's also an error to claim that it's "wrong" to call a tomato a vegetable. Words have different meanings, and you're in for a lifetime of frustration if you go around insisting that cultures are only permitted to use all words in exactly the way that scientists use them.)
    - trentlott 10y ago
      Fruit/berry are biological distinctions, I think, whereas vegetable-ness is mostly culinary. I recall reading an argument refuting this, but it didn't alter my way of differentiating.
moopling 10y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU Is in Russian but has English subtitles
vittore 10y ago
"What I want to say here is that Lenin was not only a mushroom , but also a radio wave" (C)
Gravityloss 10y ago
Gullibility research is an established area, as these things are important for selling products and getting people voted to office. For example, things people believe about the EU will affect their vote on Brexit tomorrow. Here's an egregious example of a widely circulated totally false myth: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp
- 10dpd 10y ago
  A quick keyword search for "cabbage" within EU legislation reveals 1273 documents: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/search.html?qid=1466597258008&text=cabbage&scope=EURLEX&type=quick&lang=en http://eur-lex.europa.eu/search.html?qid=1466597258008&text=...
  - morsch 10y ago
    I looked at a few. I thought it was interesting that many of the ones I tried did not contain the word "cabbage", apparently they do some semantic matching which ends up including articles about cauliflower (which is a cabbage), endives and potatoes. Also, the titles are hilarious: Council Regulation (EC) No 969/94 of 26 April 1994 fixing the basic price and the buying-in price for cauliflowers for the period 1 to 31 May 1994 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31994R0969&rid=141 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE... Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1775/93 of 2 July 1993 amending Regulation (EEC) No 2165/92 laying down detailed rules for the application of the specific measures for Madeira and the Azores as regards potatoes and endives http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31993R1775&qid=1466597258008&from=EN http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...
    - Gravityloss 10y ago
      Those are quite short? EU is for a large part an agricultural subsidy organization. The paperwork does cause a lot of overhead for the farmers, no doubt.
  - knowaveragejoe 10y ago
oblio 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_d...
- annnnd 10y ago
  Nice one, straight to the point! :)
vizzah 10y ago
Well, I watched it on TV when I was 14 years old and shortly after USSR break up, obviously having no experience of mockumentaries before, having seen Lenin in the mausoleum few years earlier.. all that stuff was really mind blowing, even though it was hard to believe and raised mock suspicions - I remember I questioned my parents about it =)
- aaron695 10y ago
  > I remember I questioned my parents about it What did they say? Do you think any adults believed it? You sounded confused rather than a believer.
  - vizzah 10y ago
    Sure I didn't buy it, was just perplexed by the idea itself. I never seen anything so wacky on TV before. My parents dismissed it right away and told me not to spend time watching that kind of rubbish. I doubt adults believed it, only those who'd fancy paranormal stuff. (All those UFOs, Bermuda triangle, fortune tellers were so ever popular in USSR those days).
    - e12e 10y ago
      Haha. For something equally funny, but more serious (in a way, although making fun of Lenin at the time is nothing to sneeze at), have a look at the work of "the Yes Men": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men Perhaps my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI "Bhopal Disaster - BBC - The Yes Men" - where they tricked media, including the BBC, into believing they were Dow Chemical spokespersons, and that Dow would take responsibility for the Bhopal chemical disaster, after Dow bought Union Carbide. [ed: some context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lScyQYUHLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lScyQYUHLA ]
Graham24 10y ago
That's up there with the great spaghetti tree hoax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU "The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer..."
- Graham24 10y ago
  ah, of course. Dried in the sun because most people in the UK 1957 would only know of packet spaghetti.
- puzzlingcaptcha 10y ago
  There is also the internet classic "Spiders on Drugs" although it drops the act half way through https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc
muterad_murilax 10y ago
And yet his embalmed body was there all along for everyone to see.
- js8 10y ago
  If he wasn't a mushroom then, he probably is a mushroom now..
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ProfChronos 10y ago
While reading the wikipedia article, I couldn't help thinking about two things: - the Big Lebowski scene when Walter jumps on the Dude's attempt to quote Lenin and mixes Lenin with Lennon - one thing I recently read about natural language processing [1]: "NLP began in the 1950s as the intersection of artificial intelligence and linguistics. (...) Early simplistic approaches, for example, word-for-word Russian-to-English machine translation,2 were defeated by homographs—identically spelled words with multiple meanings—and metaphor, leading to the apocryphal story of the Biblical, ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’ being translated to ‘the vodka is agreeable, but the meat is spoiled.’ [1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/
- cstavish 10y ago
  Apt reference, but to be clear, it is Donny who jumps on the Dude's attempt to quote Lenin, and Walter who scornfully corrects him, "V.I. Lenin-- Vladimir Ilyich ULYANOV!"
  - ProfChronos 10y ago
    You're right, I just wrote too fast, I meant what you wrote!
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    Walter wasn't wrong, he was just... you know.
  - avodonosov 10y ago
    The original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDOJ4L0Edk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDOJ4L0Edk
- riprowan 10y ago
  > ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’ being translated to ‘the vodka is agreeable, but the meat is spoiled.’ This is great! The way I heard it: "out of sight, out of mind" translated to "invisible idiot."
Artlav 10y ago
And this was just the first in the long line of hoaxes that included the world's largest pyramid (Ponzi?) scheme and legal homeopatics, which filled the faith vacuum left followed the dissolution of the union. People had no clue that a TV can lie about "X happened" (rather than "X didn't happen"), what else you can do with money besides earn, buy and sell, and so on. It was such a rich scam market.
- hammock 10y ago
  What else can you do with money. Save, invest?
  - Artlav 10y ago
    Change them to US$ or Deutschmarks, invest them into all sorts of stock that were popping up - everyone got a one-time voucher with a nominal price of 10₽ that could have been used to privatize some property or could be used to buy stock in one or the other "company", most of which were pyramid schemes. Then debt, loans, bank accounts. Saving in a bank vs saving under a pillow (former burned up in 1998, latter burned up in 1991). Even more, it was now legal to sell things at a profit, so you could earn money in more than two ways (job or steal) now. Things like that - the entire "market economics" was black magic to most.
- avdicius 10y ago
  It was not the first. It was after Allan Chumak made it to the TV. And after lots of other absurdity like teachings of Helena Roerich was thrown in to blow Soviet people's minds. Actually Kuryokhin was making fun of all of this, it's rather a parody than a genuine hoax.
  - Artlav 10y ago
    Yep, should have said "one of the first". I was a kid during these times, so i don't quite remember the precise sequences, only that the onslaught worked kind of like a BS vaccine for the younger generation.
alva 10y ago
Probably not a fungi to be around at least
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FuturePromise 10y ago
It reminds me of the Yip Harburg song: Napoleon's a pastry Bismarck is a herring Alexander's a crème de cacao mixed with rum And Herbie Hoover is a vacuum Columbus is a circle and a day off Pershing is a square, what a pay-off Julius Caesar is just a salad on a shelf So, little brother, get wise to yourself Life's a bowl and it's full of cherry pits Play it big and it throws you for a loop That's the way with fate, comes today, we're great Comes tomorrow, we're tomato soup (See http://genius.com/Lena-horne-napoleon-lyrics http://genius.com/Lena-horne-napoleon-lyrics )
tobymather 10y ago
I wrote my dissertation on this
- dandelion_lover 10y ago
  So would you mind sharing it?
- throwawaysocks 10y ago
  Have a link?
hodder 10y ago
Here's another clue for you all, The Walrus is Paul.
pierrec 10y ago
The US today isn't in much of a different boat. Granted, a human being a mushroom is quite an extreme one, but I'm sure a well-crafted documentary reaching a wide enough audience could still have a deplorable impact. Here's a 2013 poll on conspiracy theories: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-theory-poll-results-.html http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-t... I was in high school when one of the "moon landings were a hoax" documentaries made the rounds. A significant portion of my class was instantly converted by the documentary. I lost a little of my faith in humanity at that time, though much of it was quickly recovered thanks to an excellent math teacher who paid attention to his students, found out about the phenomenon, and dedicated half of a class to thoroughly debunking it.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  When I grew up in Germany almost everyone seemed to believe that the moon landing was a hoax. In fact I was usually labeled as the crazy one by my peers for believing it actually happened.
  - geoka9 10y ago
    It's still widely believed in Russia (more for the anti-American sentiment than particular veracity of the claim).
    - kirrent 10y ago
      Man, if I was Russian I think I'd be even more likely to believe it happened than if I was American. I mean, given the propensity for governments over the years to call events American conspiracies, the fact that Russian leaders haven't ever said the landing was faked when they'd be gleeful to say it if it was is conspicuous.
      - AnAfrican 10y ago
        It Was Broadcasted Live (or almost) In The USSR. No Way, the Government of the USSR would have done that if they had any doubt about it being an hoax.
Atwood 10y ago
In communist Russ Golden Teacher B+'s YOU!
radiorental 10y ago
Let us not forget the exceptional spaghetti harvest of 1957 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU Thanks, in part, to an unusual lull in population numbers of the notorious Spaghetti Weevil.
- gvurrdon 10y ago
  I am reminded of an advertisement for "compressed molecules" lager from the 80s. This is the only reference I can find: https://broken-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/when-advertising-was-good-top-ten.html https://broken-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/when-advertising-wa... I was starting to think I'd imagined it.
golergka 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI_CSKSshWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI_CSKSshWg Here's the 55min version I've found - I think it's the longest one available on youtube. Random phrases that I just had to translate to illustrate the whole tone of the video: "Do you know that Quran allows jews to eat mushrooms only one day a week - on saturday?" "So you would think that this is an ordinary small mushroom... Although really, it is a huge, spherical, energy-intensive, cosmological matter, spreading it's dome into open astral space. -- So where does it grow? -- Excellent question. The thing is, it grows nowhere. I reaches out and finds a human - see, it's mushrooms who are picking humans, not humans picking mushrooms." "We are looking at a mushroom culture - not really a culture, but a geodynamic, geopolitic sphere of the mushroom world - as a certain telescopic object" "A great group of mushroom geneticists work in the Nuclear Physics Institute." "So, it's been said that mushrooms look like flaccid phalluses, so I thought that they carry within them a manly spirit - or corrupted manly spirit, actually, since they're flaccid."
100ideas 10y ago
Here's one of the articles (JSTOR) referenced on the en Wikipedia page: A Parasite from Outer Space:: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom Alexei Yurchak Slavic Review Vol. 70, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 307-333 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70....
avodonosov 10y ago
That's a well-known fact (as well as that Putin is a krab)
- nice_byte 10y ago
  too bad there probably aren't enough russians here to understand that reference
  - mk-61 10y ago
    Quite enough.
botfly 10y ago
Has anyone ever classified forms of gullibility before? For example, is there a name for the form of gullibility that will make otherwise smart people believe ridiculous things if it reinforces their belief that they are smarter than everyone else?
MBCook 10y ago
I've never heard of that before, pretty cool. But now I've got the idea of trying to write lyrics for "Lenin Was A Mushroom" (to the tune of Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog) stuck in my head, but I can't because I have too much work to do today.
- tsukikage 10y ago
  Haven't you heard? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWqB4x7S9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWqB4x7S9I
sonthonax 10y ago
The artist/prankster, Sergey Kuryokhin was also a fabulous pianist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IvUgRylquA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IvUgRylquA And quite possibly one of the greatest artists of 90s Russia.
davesque 10y ago
I love how that official chose to correct the people: Don't worry everyone. Just remember that "a mammal cannot be a plant" and everything's going to be okay.
mendelk 10y ago
This is great :) On a related note, someone posted a question to r/newzealand if it was true that having a vegetable garden is illegal in NZ[0]. The entire subreddit then spontaneously decided that indeed it was. The deadpan was so well done, that it had lots of people actually confused, if not convinced! r/OutOfTheLoop post "outing" the hoax: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ovxb1/is_the_new_zealand_antigardening_law_real_or_not/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ovxb1/is_the... [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/2nem47/can_you_have_a_garden_in_new_zealand/ https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/2nem47/can_you_...
- Macha 10y ago
  r/Ireland does this from time to time to American tourists who ask too patronising questions
  - vool 10y ago
    Anyone see my pocket fish ?
- marme 10y ago
  the reason people ask this is because in america there are some cities that have outlawed gardens and types of plants you can plant in your front yard, it is insane. So the question is not that ridiculous but i am sure it seems ridiculous to new zealanders just like it laws banning gardens are ridiculous but they do exist
  - shavingspiders 10y ago
    I thought it was because of some weird laws coming through to limit small commercial gardening through licensing, and it blew totally out of proportion as people misunderstood it.
  - e12e 10y ago
    While I can't speak to garden state-laws, I can see some good reasons to outlaw poisonous plants in a garden that is accessible to children in a neighbourhood. Especially some of those cruel plants that look like they have good tasting berries that can in fact kill a five year old.
Finnucane 10y ago
I for one believe that a person can turn into a mushroom: I have seen it on the TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqaslCGn-6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqaslCGn-6w
narrator 10y ago
I read the headline and thought he was kept in the dark and fed excrement by Stalin.
aluhut 10y ago
Great to see Carlos Castaneda in this. The ultimate Troll and still good enough for New-Age ideologies.
avdicius 10y ago
I don't think many people believed it. Actually it was more of a satire than a hoax. A mockery of the BS wave that befell on gullible and unprepared audience upon Perestroika.
dghughes 10y ago
Now it's "Well I saw someone Facebook say that ... "taken as 100% truth.
justaaron 10y ago
Ah the "Lenin Grib" story- tv announcers taken too seriously apparently...
alanh 10y ago
A Parasite from Outer Space: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom Author(s): Alexei Yurchak Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 307-333 Published by: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307 . On Sci-Hub: http://www.jstor.org.sci-hub.bz/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307# http://www.jstor.org.sci-hub.bz/stable/10.5612/slavicreview....
tn13 10y ago
I am amused but not surprised and there this nothing unique about Russian people either. Many times survival in society vastly depends on believing absurdity because cost to sticking to obvious truth could mean death. That is why women in Saudi Arabia were Hijab and take beating from husband even though for any sensible human being it should sound ridiculously stupid. Americans are no different either. One has to only look at the irrational fear of guns, terrorists or Muslims that schools or media promotes on regular basis and sometimes well supported by laws too. To give an example, one of my friends bought a simple bow and arrow to his kids who practiced in a safe environment of his backyard. The bow itself was not very powerful and the arrows did not have any harmful tips. So one day cops showed up on his door and claimed that the neighbor had complained. The cops told the guy that a "Bow and arrow" is considered a "Gun" in California. A gun can be fired only in a range as per the law and what his kids just did was "discharging a firearm in an harmful manner". This is a felony that required them to arrest the father and send him to jail. What father had done was completely common sense thing. The law was absurd. The cops were gracious to let him go but later the father told me that if tomorrow anyone tells him that it is a felony to make barbecue in your backyard without FDA approval I might as well believe it.
dkaigorodov 10y ago
It was a very important step for people of USSR to understand that TV != truth. The movie was to the very point. Quite an important topic for USSR with an absolutely absurd statement just forces people to think and rely on their own judgement only. And it simple to do in this case. Now people not just was given a freedom to think. Now it is a must. To think and to have OWN opinion.
pandaman 10y ago
I think the English wiki article is brilliant because the article itself is what it's describing. Kuryokhin told a tall tale on the TV and people enjoyed its absurdity and humor. I would not say nobody believed it (you can find somebody who believes any given bs) but I'd bet the 11.25M number in the wiki is exaggerated many orders of magnitude. The whole statement of the article about many Soviet people falling for this is as true as that a lot of Americans believed that the film Borat is a documentary. Or, that Lenin was, indeed, a mushroom)).
lunchTime42 10y ago
Mario ( a working class plumber) made a career out of squishing mushrooms, to get the princess in the castle. Once your deducation goes whack, you can never go back.
ommunist 10y ago
Who wasn't? I am glad Lenin became a normal corpse, and I grief it has low buryability.

574 points by Smaug123 10y ago

StavrosK 10y ago

Does anyone know the argument chain? I'm curious how someone made this outlandish claim sound plausible.

tossaway1 10y ago
Was thinking the same thing. That seems like a big omission from the article unless the chain was just some sort of incoherent meandering rant...
- jarman 10y ago
  Most coherent argument was vague similarity of iconic "Lenin speaks from armored car" image (http://klin-demianovo.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/prizyvvogdja.jpg http://klin-demianovo.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/prizyvvo...) with mycelium (car) and fruit body (Lenin) >some sort of incoherent meandering rant That was the point: total absurdity told with total seriousness.
gchp 10y ago
> I'm curious how someone made this outlandish claim sound plausible. From the article: > Soviet television had, up to that point, been regarded by its audience as conservative in style and content. As a result, a large number of Soviet citizens (one estimate puts the number at 11,250,000 audience members) took the deadpan "interview" at face value, in spite of the absurd claims presented. I guess this had something to do with it? If people were used to TV being a certain way, and this "interview" was presented in the same way, then it would seem reasonable that it would be taken up in the same was as every other. Nothing (aside from content) made it stand out from other shows. Saying that, the claim is crazy, and it does seem strange that it was seemingly accepted as truth. I wonder how a similar stunt could be attempted today, and what the reaction would be...
- icen 10y ago
  For a western analogue, try the BBC's spaghetti plantations.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    In Sweden we had the Colour TV Stocking http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/instant_color_tv http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/instant_color_tv
  - vermontdevil 10y ago
    I was going to post that too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti-tree_hoax Loved this one as well.
  - VLM 10y ago
    or political correctness, as typically indoctrinated in school.
    - kodfodrasz 10y ago
      saying such things to this particular audience will result in massive downvotes.
      - boomlinde 10y ago
        With less variation it seems to result in someone complaining about their imaginary persecution.
  - Rexxar 10y ago
    They should have tried with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_squash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_squash
- dottedmag 10y ago
  TV propaganda in contemporary Russia works pretty well, so TV is still seen as an authority. It does not help that there are no large TV stations anymore in Russia that are not state-owned (openly or covertly).
azeirah 10y ago
Argument chain is mostly irrelevant here, people who fall for this simply believe anything who pretends to be an authority. Heck, I know for one that I /could/ believe something like this. A friend of mine once convinced me that both wheels of a bicycle rotate into the opposite direction, just to test my gullibility. I totally fell for it, even though we were on the bike at that very moment. I could've easily checked or reasoned that it didn't make any sense whatsoever.
- alister 10y ago
  > wheels of a bicycle rotate into the opposite direction Your example reminded me that on a very rare occasion something that sounds stupid and counter-intuitive is true: A train wheel always has some point on it that is traveling backwards when the train is moving forward. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? If the train is moving forward, then all points on the train are moving forward. How could it be otherwise? This is very difficult to explain without a diagram: https://books.google.ca/books?id=SiviAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=train+wheel+travels+backward++prolate+cycloid&source=bl&ots=E5JpPwNEcT&sig=tAzwZA1jY4cLsKv7l8DDre97FbY&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=train%20wheel%20travels%20backward%20%20prolate%20cycloid&f=false https://books.google.ca/books?id=SiviAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA143&lpg=P...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - OscarCunningham 10y ago
    I think the thing with the train wheels is sort of obvious once you see that it only works because part of the wheel overhangs the rail. The axle of the wheel is moving forwards, and the bit in contact with the track is stationary, so the bit further out than that is going backwards.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    I don't think it's that difficult to explain. The part under the track, the "flange" goes backwards. The part exactly on the track is not moving at all, same as a car (or any other) wheel. This is also pretty obvious when you consider that if the wheel was turning in relation to the ground, it would be skidding.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
This was very very early post-Soviet TV. Soviet TV had around 6 channels and everything on them was always very very bland and was supposed to be accepted outright it not believed. Kind of gets you after 30 years of watching. And then boom, and you have "Lenin is a Mushroom". I believe some confusion was genuine.
anonymfus 10y ago
It was more like a network of connections than a chain.
100ideas 10y ago
"Every revolution, he argued, is indeed an impressive visual spectacle. Although we usually assume that visual representations of a revolution happen later, after the events have already taken place, Kurekhin argued that revolutions are simply too spectacular to happen on their own. Some- one “first [has] to visualize certain images and later attempt to reproduce them in reality.” During a recent visit to Mexico, he continued, he had seen frescos that depicted the Mexican revolution of the early twentieth century in a style identical to the one used for the Russian Bolshevik revo- lution: “the same exhausted people, armed with primitive tools of labor, overthrowing some rulers.” In order for revolutionary leaders in both places to have imagined these events in a similar manner, their minds must surely have been sub- jected to similar influences. In Mexico, the source of influence is clear. During ritualistic ceremonies, Kurekhin explained, the native peoples routinely used drinks prepared from Lophophora Williamsii or peyote— a Mexican cactus with strong psychotropic properties.2 Although Mexican cacti do not grow in Russia, Kurekhin noted, Russian forests do have an abundance of similar hallucinogens: mushrooms, most prominently the fly agaric mushroom (mukhomor).3 These mushrooms, he claimed, induce the same effects as the Mexican cacti: “people see absolutely incredible pictures very vividly and colorfully” and “enormous scenes of great events and revolutions fly before your eyes.” Building on this premise, Kurekhin began to formulate his famous thesis: “Reading the correspondence between [Vladimir] Lenin and [Iosif] Stalin I came across one phrase: ‘Yesterday I ate too many mush- rooms, but I felt great.’” Bolshevik leaders ate a lot of mushrooms, Kure- khin mused, and some of them surely had hallucinogenic properties. If consumed for many years, these mushrooms can permanently change an individual’s personality. Indeed, Kurekhin continued in an unwaver- ing scholarly tone, “I have absolutely irrefutable proof that the October revolution was carried out by people who had been consuming certain mushrooms for many years. And these mushrooms, in the process of be- ing consumed by these people, had displaced their personalities. These people were turning into mushrooms. In other words, I simply want to say that Lenin was a mushroom.” A Parasite from Outer Space:: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom Alexei Yurchak Slavic Review Vol. 70, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 307-333 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70....
avdicius 10y ago
There was no valid arguments. Just bogus claims interspersed with irrelevant quotes and a pretence of authority.
krick 10y ago
I am not sure if telling it second-handedly would make any sense. Actually, even watching it translated to english hardly would be the same experience. Basically, to any intelligent person it was an obvious joke, but quite a good one. The most powerful part of it wasn't what he was telling, actually, but how he was doing it: you know, some sane-looking person, a fluent, eloquent speaker, is telling something so ridiculous so seriously, that you might even start to question what is true anyway. He uses some clever words, pseudo-scientific side-notes, mis-interpreted quotes, and all the time he looks deadly serious, repeatedly asking the audience: "You see what's going on here? It's absolutely unbelievable!" To summarize it, it was something like this: he persuades you, that Lenin was heavily abusing psychodelic mushrooms, then, going through some pseudo-scientific gibberish makes a claim, that heavy use of mushrooms led to that a mushroom basically displaced human consciousness, then, by making some random observations "supporting" his claim, makes the statement "Lenin became a mushroom" more and more literal. Anyway, I would argue that it has nothing to do with Soviet propaganda and such: it was a great performance, but not so different in it's nature from a kind of reasoning in the very modern western propaganda or quasi-documental movies about aliens and such. Only it was mockingly exaggerated on purpose.

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maheart 10y ago

Haha, hilarious, thanks for sharing. I had to see this for myself. Source: Video, part1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU Video, part2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExXDxpBFFR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExXDxpBFFR0 The "revelation" occurs at 2m36s: https://youtu.be/ExXDxpBFFR0?t=156 https://youtu.be/ExXDxpBFFR0?t=156

leni536 10y ago
"Furthermore, he was not only a mushroom, but also a radio wave."
anonymfus 10y ago
That's a very short version. I have a Lenin-grib.Sergey.Kuryohin.1991.avi with length of 1:33:11 on my PC.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Care to upload it? Since it was on Soviet television there isn't a copyright issue.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    Wikipedia links to this page with an hour-long programme: http://www.teterin.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=323&Itemid=158 http://www.teterin.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view... But it's not subtitled.
  - anonymfus 10y ago
    Pretty sure that broadcasting on soviet television does not remove copyright protection from the work. But there are many other almost complete versions on YT, so I uploaded it anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dp4H88ujY4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dp4H88ujY4 Also I see that owners of 4 music compositions in it will monetize it: https://i.redd.it/otijgsg8du4x.png https://i.redd.it/otijgsg8du4x.png

quantumhobbit 10y ago

"one of the top regional functionaries stated that "Lenin could not have been a mushroom" because "a mammal can not be a plant."" I love the the logic here. As though "Lenin was a bottle nose dolphin" would have been more plausible. Also did the Soviets have the same taxonomy as the west, meaning mushrooms would be fungi and not plants?

ajuc 10y ago
It's great but it's not a proof, because a mushroom isn't a plant.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
Functionaries were as clueless about taxonomy as about anything else.
oblio 10y ago
Go out on the street and ask 3-4 regular passers-by what "taxonomy" means :)
- jerf 10y ago
  I think the question is about the cultural taxonomy, not the scientific one. For instance, culturally, tomatoes are often a vegetable in the United States, but botanically they're a berry and therefore a fruit. A culture could either treat fungus as in the "plant" category or not in the "plant" category and both would be culturally reasonable. (It's also an error to claim that it's "wrong" to call a tomato a vegetable. Words have different meanings, and you're in for a lifetime of frustration if you go around insisting that cultures are only permitted to use all words in exactly the way that scientists use them.)
  - trentlott 10y ago
    Fruit/berry are biological distinctions, I think, whereas vegetable-ness is mostly culinary. I recall reading an argument refuting this, but it didn't alter my way of differentiating.

moopling 10y ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h2cs8QLnxlU Is in Russian but has English subtitles

vittore 10y ago

"What I want to say here is that Lenin was not only a mushroom , but also a radio wave" (C)

Gravityloss 10y ago

Gullibility research is an established area, as these things are important for selling products and getting people voted to office. For example, things people believe about the EU will affect their vote on Brexit tomorrow. Here's an egregious example of a widely circulated totally false myth: http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp http://www.snopes.com/language/document/cabbage.asp

10dpd 10y ago
A quick keyword search for "cabbage" within EU legislation reveals 1273 documents: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/search.html?qid=1466597258008&text=cabbage&scope=EURLEX&type=quick&lang=en http://eur-lex.europa.eu/search.html?qid=1466597258008&text=...
- morsch 10y ago
  I looked at a few. I thought it was interesting that many of the ones I tried did not contain the word "cabbage", apparently they do some semantic matching which ends up including articles about cauliflower (which is a cabbage), endives and potatoes. Also, the titles are hilarious: Council Regulation (EC) No 969/94 of 26 April 1994 fixing the basic price and the buying-in price for cauliflowers for the period 1 to 31 May 1994 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31994R0969&rid=141 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE... Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1775/93 of 2 July 1993 amending Regulation (EEC) No 2165/92 laying down detailed rules for the application of the specific measures for Madeira and the Azores as regards potatoes and endives http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:31993R1775&qid=1466597258008&from=EN http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE...
  - Gravityloss 10y ago
    Those are quite short? EU is for a large part an agricultural subsidy organization. The paperwork does cause a lot of overhead for the farmers, no doubt.
- knowaveragejoe 10y ago

oblio 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_drama) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio_d...

annnnd 10y ago
Nice one, straight to the point! :)

vizzah 10y ago

Well, I watched it on TV when I was 14 years old and shortly after USSR break up, obviously having no experience of mockumentaries before, having seen Lenin in the mausoleum few years earlier.. all that stuff was really mind blowing, even though it was hard to believe and raised mock suspicions - I remember I questioned my parents about it =)

aaron695 10y ago
> I remember I questioned my parents about it What did they say? Do you think any adults believed it? You sounded confused rather than a believer.
- vizzah 10y ago
  Sure I didn't buy it, was just perplexed by the idea itself. I never seen anything so wacky on TV before. My parents dismissed it right away and told me not to spend time watching that kind of rubbish. I doubt adults believed it, only those who'd fancy paranormal stuff. (All those UFOs, Bermuda triangle, fortune tellers were so ever popular in USSR those days).
  - e12e 10y ago
    Haha. For something equally funny, but more serious (in a way, although making fun of Lenin at the time is nothing to sneeze at), have a look at the work of "the Yes Men": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men Perhaps my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiWlvBro9eI "Bhopal Disaster - BBC - The Yes Men" - where they tricked media, including the BBC, into believing they were Dow Chemical spokespersons, and that Dow would take responsibility for the Bhopal chemical disaster, after Dow bought Union Carbide. [ed: some context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lScyQYUHLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lScyQYUHLA ]

Graham24 10y ago

That's up there with the great spaghetti tree hoax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU "The last two weeks of March are an anxious time for the spaghetti farmer..."

Graham24 10y ago
ah, of course. Dried in the sun because most people in the UK 1957 would only know of packet spaghetti.
puzzlingcaptcha 10y ago
There is also the internet classic "Spiders on Drugs" although it drops the act half way through https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc

muterad_murilax 10y ago

And yet his embalmed body was there all along for everyone to see.

js8 10y ago
If he wasn't a mushroom then, he probably is a mushroom now..

deleted 10y ago

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ProfChronos 10y ago

While reading the wikipedia article, I couldn't help thinking about two things: - the Big Lebowski scene when Walter jumps on the Dude's attempt to quote Lenin and mixes Lenin with Lennon - one thing I recently read about natural language processing [1]: "NLP began in the 1950s as the intersection of artificial intelligence and linguistics. (...) Early simplistic approaches, for example, word-for-word Russian-to-English machine translation,2 were defeated by homographs—identically spelled words with multiple meanings—and metaphor, leading to the apocryphal story of the Biblical, ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’ being translated to ‘the vodka is agreeable, but the meat is spoiled.’ [1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168328/

cstavish 10y ago
Apt reference, but to be clear, it is Donny who jumps on the Dude's attempt to quote Lenin, and Walter who scornfully corrects him, "V.I. Lenin-- Vladimir Ilyich ULYANOV!"
- ProfChronos 10y ago
  You're right, I just wrote too fast, I meant what you wrote!
- karmelapple 10y ago
  Walter wasn't wrong, he was just... you know.
- avodonosov 10y ago
  The original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDOJ4L0Edk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDOJ4L0Edk
riprowan 10y ago
> ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’ being translated to ‘the vodka is agreeable, but the meat is spoiled.’ This is great! The way I heard it: "out of sight, out of mind" translated to "invisible idiot."

Artlav 10y ago

And this was just the first in the long line of hoaxes that included the world's largest pyramid (Ponzi?) scheme and legal homeopatics, which filled the faith vacuum left followed the dissolution of the union. People had no clue that a TV can lie about "X happened" (rather than "X didn't happen"), what else you can do with money besides earn, buy and sell, and so on. It was such a rich scam market.

hammock 10y ago
What else can you do with money. Save, invest?
- Artlav 10y ago
  Change them to US$ or Deutschmarks, invest them into all sorts of stock that were popping up - everyone got a one-time voucher with a nominal price of 10₽ that could have been used to privatize some property or could be used to buy stock in one or the other "company", most of which were pyramid schemes. Then debt, loans, bank accounts. Saving in a bank vs saving under a pillow (former burned up in 1998, latter burned up in 1991). Even more, it was now legal to sell things at a profit, so you could earn money in more than two ways (job or steal) now. Things like that - the entire "market economics" was black magic to most.
avdicius 10y ago
It was not the first. It was after Allan Chumak made it to the TV. And after lots of other absurdity like teachings of Helena Roerich was thrown in to blow Soviet people's minds. Actually Kuryokhin was making fun of all of this, it's rather a parody than a genuine hoax.
- Artlav 10y ago
  Yep, should have said "one of the first". I was a kid during these times, so i don't quite remember the precise sequences, only that the onslaught worked kind of like a BS vaccine for the younger generation.

alva 10y ago

Probably not a fungi to be around at least

deleted 10y ago

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FuturePromise 10y ago

It reminds me of the Yip Harburg song: Napoleon's a pastry Bismarck is a herring Alexander's a crème de cacao mixed with rum And Herbie Hoover is a vacuum Columbus is a circle and a day off Pershing is a square, what a pay-off Julius Caesar is just a salad on a shelf So, little brother, get wise to yourself Life's a bowl and it's full of cherry pits Play it big and it throws you for a loop That's the way with fate, comes today, we're great Comes tomorrow, we're tomato soup (See http://genius.com/Lena-horne-napoleon-lyrics http://genius.com/Lena-horne-napoleon-lyrics )

tobymather 10y ago

I wrote my dissertation on this

dandelion_lover 10y ago
So would you mind sharing it?
throwawaysocks 10y ago
Have a link?

hodder 10y ago

Here's another clue for you all, The Walrus is Paul.

pierrec 10y ago

The US today isn't in much of a different boat. Granted, a human being a mushroom is quite an extreme one, but I'm sure a well-crafted documentary reaching a wide enough audience could still have a deplorable impact. Here's a 2013 poll on conspiracy theories: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-theory-poll-results-.html http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-t... I was in high school when one of the "moon landings were a hoax" documentaries made the rounds. A significant portion of my class was instantly converted by the documentary. I lost a little of my faith in humanity at that time, though much of it was quickly recovered thanks to an excellent math teacher who paid attention to his students, found out about the phenomenon, and dedicated half of a class to thoroughly debunking it.

ajmurmann 10y ago
When I grew up in Germany almost everyone seemed to believe that the moon landing was a hoax. In fact I was usually labeled as the crazy one by my peers for believing it actually happened.
- geoka9 10y ago
  It's still widely believed in Russia (more for the anti-American sentiment than particular veracity of the claim).
  - kirrent 10y ago
    Man, if I was Russian I think I'd be even more likely to believe it happened than if I was American. I mean, given the propensity for governments over the years to call events American conspiracies, the fact that Russian leaders haven't ever said the landing was faked when they'd be gleeful to say it if it was is conspicuous.
    - AnAfrican 10y ago
      It Was Broadcasted Live (or almost) In The USSR. No Way, the Government of the USSR would have done that if they had any doubt about it being an hoax.

Atwood 10y ago

In communist Russ Golden Teacher B+'s YOU!

radiorental 10y ago

Let us not forget the exceptional spaghetti harvest of 1957 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU Thanks, in part, to an unusual lull in population numbers of the notorious Spaghetti Weevil.

gvurrdon 10y ago
I am reminded of an advertisement for "compressed molecules" lager from the 80s. This is the only reference I can find: https://broken-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/when-advertising-was-good-top-ten.html https://broken-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/when-advertising-wa... I was starting to think I'd imagined it.

golergka 10y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI_CSKSshWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI_CSKSshWg Here's the 55min version I've found - I think it's the longest one available on youtube. Random phrases that I just had to translate to illustrate the whole tone of the video: "Do you know that Quran allows jews to eat mushrooms only one day a week - on saturday?" "So you would think that this is an ordinary small mushroom... Although really, it is a huge, spherical, energy-intensive, cosmological matter, spreading it's dome into open astral space. -- So where does it grow? -- Excellent question. The thing is, it grows nowhere. I reaches out and finds a human - see, it's mushrooms who are picking humans, not humans picking mushrooms." "We are looking at a mushroom culture - not really a culture, but a geodynamic, geopolitic sphere of the mushroom world - as a certain telescopic object" "A great group of mushroom geneticists work in the Nuclear Physics Institute." "So, it's been said that mushrooms look like flaccid phalluses, so I thought that they carry within them a manly spirit - or corrupted manly spirit, actually, since they're flaccid."

100ideas 10y ago

Here's one of the articles (JSTOR) referenced on the en Wikipedia page: A Parasite from Outer Space:: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom Alexei Yurchak Slavic Review Vol. 70, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 307-333 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307 http://libgen.io/scimag/get.php?doi=10.5612/slavicreview.70....

avodonosov 10y ago

That's a well-known fact (as well as that Putin is a krab)

nice_byte 10y ago
too bad there probably aren't enough russians here to understand that reference
- mk-61 10y ago
  Quite enough.

botfly 10y ago

Has anyone ever classified forms of gullibility before? For example, is there a name for the form of gullibility that will make otherwise smart people believe ridiculous things if it reinforces their belief that they are smarter than everyone else?

MBCook 10y ago

I've never heard of that before, pretty cool. But now I've got the idea of trying to write lyrics for "Lenin Was A Mushroom" (to the tune of Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog) stuck in my head, but I can't because I have too much work to do today.

tsukikage 10y ago
Haven't you heard? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWqB4x7S9I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MWqB4x7S9I

sonthonax 10y ago

The artist/prankster, Sergey Kuryokhin was also a fabulous pianist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IvUgRylquA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IvUgRylquA And quite possibly one of the greatest artists of 90s Russia.

davesque 10y ago

I love how that official chose to correct the people: Don't worry everyone. Just remember that "a mammal cannot be a plant" and everything's going to be okay.

mendelk 10y ago

This is great :) On a related note, someone posted a question to r/newzealand if it was true that having a vegetable garden is illegal in NZ[0]. The entire subreddit then spontaneously decided that indeed it was. The deadpan was so well done, that it had lots of people actually confused, if not convinced! r/OutOfTheLoop post "outing" the hoax: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ovxb1/is_the_new_zealand_antigardening_law_real_or_not/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/4ovxb1/is_the... [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/2nem47/can_you_have_a_garden_in_new_zealand/ https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/2nem47/can_you_...

Macha 10y ago
r/Ireland does this from time to time to American tourists who ask too patronising questions
- vool 10y ago
  Anyone see my pocket fish ?
marme 10y ago
the reason people ask this is because in america there are some cities that have outlawed gardens and types of plants you can plant in your front yard, it is insane. So the question is not that ridiculous but i am sure it seems ridiculous to new zealanders just like it laws banning gardens are ridiculous but they do exist
- shavingspiders 10y ago
  I thought it was because of some weird laws coming through to limit small commercial gardening through licensing, and it blew totally out of proportion as people misunderstood it.
- e12e 10y ago
  While I can't speak to garden state-laws, I can see some good reasons to outlaw poisonous plants in a garden that is accessible to children in a neighbourhood. Especially some of those cruel plants that look like they have good tasting berries that can in fact kill a five year old.

Finnucane 10y ago

I for one believe that a person can turn into a mushroom: I have seen it on the TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqaslCGn-6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqaslCGn-6w

narrator 10y ago

I read the headline and thought he was kept in the dark and fed excrement by Stalin.

aluhut 10y ago

Great to see Carlos Castaneda in this. The ultimate Troll and still good enough for New-Age ideologies.

avdicius 10y ago

I don't think many people believed it. Actually it was more of a satire than a hoax. A mockery of the BS wave that befell on gullible and unprepared audience upon Perestroika.

dghughes 10y ago

Now it's "Well I saw someone Facebook say that ... "taken as 100% truth.

justaaron 10y ago

Ah the "Lenin Grib" story- tv announcers taken too seriously apparently...

alanh 10y ago

A Parasite from Outer Space: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom Author(s): Alexei Yurchak Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (SUMMER 2011), pp. 307-333 Published by: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307 http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307 . On Sci-Hub: http://www.jstor.org.sci-hub.bz/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.70.2.0307# http://www.jstor.org.sci-hub.bz/stable/10.5612/slavicreview....

tn13 10y ago

I am amused but not surprised and there this nothing unique about Russian people either. Many times survival in society vastly depends on believing absurdity because cost to sticking to obvious truth could mean death. That is why women in Saudi Arabia were Hijab and take beating from husband even though for any sensible human being it should sound ridiculously stupid. Americans are no different either. One has to only look at the irrational fear of guns, terrorists or Muslims that schools or media promotes on regular basis and sometimes well supported by laws too. To give an example, one of my friends bought a simple bow and arrow to his kids who practiced in a safe environment of his backyard. The bow itself was not very powerful and the arrows did not have any harmful tips. So one day cops showed up on his door and claimed that the neighbor had complained. The cops told the guy that a "Bow and arrow" is considered a "Gun" in California. A gun can be fired only in a range as per the law and what his kids just did was "discharging a firearm in an harmful manner". This is a felony that required them to arrest the father and send him to jail. What father had done was completely common sense thing. The law was absurd. The cops were gracious to let him go but later the father told me that if tomorrow anyone tells him that it is a felony to make barbecue in your backyard without FDA approval I might as well believe it.

dkaigorodov 10y ago

It was a very important step for people of USSR to understand that TV != truth. The movie was to the very point. Quite an important topic for USSR with an absolutely absurd statement just forces people to think and rely on their own judgement only. And it simple to do in this case. Now people not just was given a freedom to think. Now it is a must. To think and to have OWN opinion.

pandaman 10y ago

I think the English wiki article is brilliant because the article itself is what it's describing. Kuryokhin told a tall tale on the TV and people enjoyed its absurdity and humor. I would not say nobody believed it (you can find somebody who believes any given bs) but I'd bet the 11.25M number in the wiki is exaggerated many orders of magnitude. The whole statement of the article about many Soviet people falling for this is as true as that a lot of Americans believed that the film Borat is a documentary. Or, that Lenin was, indeed, a mushroom)).

lunchTime42 10y ago

Mario ( a working class plumber) made a career out of squishing mushrooms, to get the princess in the castle. Once your deducation goes whack, you can never go back.

ommunist 10y ago

Who wasn't? I am glad Lenin became a normal corpse, and I grief it has low buryability.