How Vladimir Lenin Became a Mushroom
December 5, 2017 2:40 PM   Subscribe

How Vladimir Lenin Became a Mushroom: The fake news that took the former Soviet Union by storm.
posted by brundlefly (12 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Some people are 9/11 Truthers. Others are Obama Birthers.

Me? I'm a Lenin Musher.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:58 PM on December 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


Incredulous, she replied that the story had to be false, “Because a mammal cannot be a plant.”

Pffft. Science!

I mean, mushrooms actually aren't plants, so....
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:22 PM on December 5, 2017 [2 favorites]


I heard Trotsky was a Mesodinium chamaeleon.
posted by jenkinsEar at 4:07 PM on December 5, 2017 [2 favorites]


Obviously false. Unless there’s a picture of Lenin wearing a turban.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 4:07 PM on December 5, 2017


The guy is still on ice in Moscow. It could happen. There's time.
posted by flabdablet at 4:20 PM on December 5, 2017


It should have been obvious that this was a hoax because Lenin was not much of a fun guy.
posted by storybored at 6:32 PM on December 5, 2017 [7 favorites]


Fair enough. Looks like there's not mushroom left in that casket either.
posted by flabdablet at 7:09 PM on December 5, 2017


The fake news that took the former Soviet Union by storm

More of a puffball piece.
posted by flabdablet at 7:10 PM on December 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


Though I guess it would have been big news in the Yeast.
posted by flabdablet at 7:12 PM on December 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


posted by brundlefly

...hmm, a little jock itch and a Soviet teleporter, and the Cronenberg movie writes itself.
posted by condour75 at 7:20 PM on December 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


Thanks for this; I loved the Kuryokhin interview when I first saw it years ago and it's good to be reminded of it. Amazingly, there's an English Wikipedia article about it; for those who read Russian, there's a much livelier take at the wonderfully snarky site Луркоморье (Lurkmore).
posted by languagehat at 8:17 AM on December 6, 2017


I don’t understand why you’re all dignifying this manipulative ret-con with your credence and jokes. No amount of spin is going to change the facts, though I guess I give this disinformation campaign points for making into English without any glaring grammatical errors.

By ballyhooing the silliest sounding aspects, and exaggerating the rest to the point of absurdity, the article works tirelessly to convince us there is nothing to any of it but a simple prank.

Was Lenin literally a mushroom man? Of course not.

But was Lenin’s behaviour steered by a chronic infection of parasitic mycelial spores? I think the careful historian will find the answer might be “maybe.” There really is an extensive literature of research on the subject, and not all of it can be dismissed out of hand.

I’ve only ever seen Russian sources myself but if someone has a link to English materials you’d see for yourself. It’s a story that starts with Rasputin and hasn’t yet ended.
posted by Construction Concern at 5:57 PM on December 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


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