Ленин – гриб. Image: from the show
…Back in the USSR, our television was different from now. There were no реклама (ads) and very few entertaining programs. Television mainly served the goals of public education and, of course, political propaganda. Most beloved were films – they were often very good (but that’s a different story). What’s interesting, 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.
One day in 1991, a political activist and scientist Sergey Kuryokhin appeared in the “5th Wheel” TV show. He was doing a research trying to understand the profound reasons of the October revolution. He had gathered and analyzed many facts and documents, his research even led him to Mexico. Finally he was there in the studio of the “5th Wheel” presenting the results of his investigation which showed that Lenin was taking psilocybe mushrooms and actually was a mushroom himself.
Check for yourself:
- with English subtitles: part 1, part 2
- without English subtitles: 30 minutes, advanced Russian
- Текст передачи по-русски (неполный)
Could you follow the logic?
What can seem a total nonsense to an educated person, especially now that there are tons of sensations and mysteries of the sort around, turned out to be a little historical moment in the USSR era. It caused sensation in the society. Some of the people believed the facts presented by Kuryokhin. Many started searching for other documentary evidence that proved Lenin being a mushroom. It was unbelievable what power television had over the average Soviet man.
Sergey Kuryokhin was in fact a Russian avant-garde musician. His goal was to demonstrate that even the most absurd or weird ideas can be ‘proved’ on TV.
Do you think it is possible now?
