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How Vladimir Lenin Became a Mushroom (2017)
- baybal2 8y agoWhen 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 8y agothe bydlo As in cattle? Charming man.
- DenisM 8y agoCloser to "redneck", but with more derision. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bydlo https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bydlo
- v_lisivka 8y agoBydlo 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".
- Tade0 8y agoWe use the same term in polish, but the meaning is different. It usually means a large congregation of people - often during some event - that make said event worse by their presence in such numbers.
- tetromino_ 8y agoI 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 8y ago«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.
- huhtenberg 8y agoIt's an almost exact equivalent of "unwashed masses" in English.
- DenisM 8y ago>with enough time and money, I can make a city to vote even for a devil himself That does not work if the other side has their own politech. But it does work if there is no other side at all.
- pessimizer 8y agoIt might be tautological, but it's probably necessary to say that the side that thinks that the people with no resources should be treated better, that side also has radically fewer resources. They usually spend their bodies, freedom, and lives; things that by definition all humans have some degree of.
- hprotagonist 8y agotime and money? ha! i can do that with a talking cat, a bottle of sunflower seed oil, and a magic show.
- chx 8y ago> did once believe that the earth was flat after all No, they didn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth
- weinzierl 8y agoThere 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/
- pavlov 8y agoIn American folklore, George Washington occupies this same "honest boy becomes national founder" niche.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoThe "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-encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth/ https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-e...
- menudo 8y agotl;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.
- geoka9 8y agoModern 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.
- richard_shelton 8y agoYou almost made me think that "Wag the Dog" is a Russian movie [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wag_the_Dog
- romwell 8y agoRemember seeing it back in Ukraine growing up; the premise was so outlandish to me that it was pretty much sci-fi. And it seemed to be especially impossible as Internet was becoming the norm. Boy was I wrong. There are so many alternative realities out there now that soon it'll be hard to find two people living in the same one.
- adventured 8y ago> There are so many alternative realities out there now that soon it'll be hard to find two people living in the same one. They were always there. Absolutely nothing has changed about how crazy people are. Now it's merely easier to commiserate or fight about it with more people.
- geoka9 8y agoМы рождены, чтоб сказку сделать былью.
- v_lisivka 8y agoMy 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.
- gcb0 8y agoUsually i love atlasobscura articles, but this one is very tiring to read even on the first paragraphs still.
- jackfoxy 8y ago> 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 8y agoWho is off limits?
- john_moscow 8y agoanything diversity-related
- Aspos 8y agoI 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 8y ago>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 8y agoThis 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.
- mda 8y agomythologized to mychologized indeed.
- the_grue 8y agoThe 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.
- yesenadam 8y agoHaha 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_Cross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr... [1] I read about that in Scientific American 20ish years ago. Some interesting leads here: http://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20american%20santa%20claus%20mushroom http://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20american%20santa...
- selimthegrim 8y agoYou might want to check out the Philip K Dick book “The Transmigration of Timothy Archer”
- yesenadam 8y agoThank 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.
- aasasd 8y agoFirst 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/
- avaika 8y agoRussian 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 8y agoReminds 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 8y agoEver 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-banned-in-china-pooh https://www.vox.com/2018/8/4/17651630/christopher-robin-bann... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moha_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moha_culture
- tsukikage 8y agoHaven't you heard? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQR-oI5PjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBQR-oI5PjI
- dang 8y agoA discussion from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15874839
- r721 8y agoAnother related one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952927