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A Parasite from Outer Space: How Sergei Kurekhin Proved That Lenin Was a Mushroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Alexei Yurchak
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Abstract

In 1991, Leningrad television broadcast a program that has since become infamous. The program's guest, Sergei Kurekhin, claiming to be a political figure and scientist, conducted an elaborate hoax that he presented as a serious historical exploration into the origins of the Bolshevik revolution. Using visual, textual, and scientific evidence, Kurekhin argued that the revolution was led by people who had been consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms. As a result, their personalities were being replaced by mushroom personalities, and their leader, Vladimir Lenin, was simply a mushroom. This fact, according to Kurekhin, shed new light on many enigmas of Soviet history. Millions of viewers were at a loss: were they witnessing a serious program, a daring prank, a case of unprecedented lunacy? In this article, Alexei Yurchak analyzes that remarkable comedic performance, its social and political effects then and now, and what it may contribute to our understanding of the relationship between politics and irony.

Type
Soviet Jocularity
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , Summer 2011 , pp. 307 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2011

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References

1. For this analysis I used a video-recording of the original program that aired on 17 May 1991. This original differs substantially from the video-recorded version that Sholokhov made available for purchase in 1996 under die tide Lenin-grib (Lenin mushroom). The latter version is shorter than the original (32 minutes instead of 70), substantially re-edited, and augmented with additional materials and interviews, including a part of the program that was not originally aired, in which Kurekhin and Sholokhov break their serious tone and start laughing. It is video clips from this later re-edited version tiiat are available today on YouTube.

2. Kurekhin referred to the writings of Permian American anthropologist and writer Carlos Castaneda, whom Kurekhin first read in a Russian samizdat translation in the mid- 1980s when it became popular among informal artistic milieus. Sergei Kurekhin, interview, St. Petersburg, 13 April 1995. Castaneda studied the rituals of Yaqui and Navajo Indians and described their consumption of peyote as a way to gain insight into one's life. Castaneda's writings have been discredited in academia as largely fictional. See Castaneda, Carlos, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (Berkeley, 1968)Google Scholar.

3. Fly agaric mushroom (amanita muscaria) contains psychoactive alkaloids that are deadly to flies and have a hallucinogenic effect on humans. In Russian traditional peasant culture, these mushrooms were used for their hallucinogenic and medicinal effects (as painkillers, as cures for neuroses and inflammations, and so on). See Letcher, Andy, Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (New York, 2007)Google Scholar.

4. On stiob, see Yurchak, Alexei, “Gagarin and the Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity, and Aesthetics in the Post-Soviet Nightlife,” in Barker, Adele Marie, ed., ConsumingRussia:Popular Culture, Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham, 1999)Google Scholar; see also Yurchak, Alexei, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, 2006)Google Scholar, chap. 7.

5. Sergei Kurekhin, interview, St. Petersburg, 13 April 1995.

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9. The history and analysis of this remarkable artistic project still awaits its author. For some footage of Pop-Mekhanika performances, see Nepevnyi's, Vladimir documentary Kurekhin:Dokumental´nyifilm (St. Petersburg, 2004)Google Scholar. Many short clips are available on YouTube.

10. Many of his scripts and movie performances also acquired popular cult status. See, for example, Sergei Debizhev's 1992 films Kompleks nevmeniaemosti (Insanity Complex) and Dva kapitnna 2 (Two Captains 2). For a comprehensive analysis of Kurekhin's cinematographic career, see Karklit T. L., “Fenomen Sergeia Kurekhina v otechestvennom kinematografe kontsa 80—nachala 90-kh godov” (thesis, Vserossiiskii gosudarstvennyi institut kinematografii im. S. I. Gerasimova, Moscow 2004), at kuryokhin.letov.ru/Karklit/ diplom/ (last accessed 15 March 2011).

11. Slavoj Žižek defines “die open” as the “intermediate phase” of a historical situation, “when die former Master-Signifier, aldiough it has already lost the hegemonical power, has not yet been replaced by the new one.” Žižek, Slavoj, Tarrying with the Negative:Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham, 1993), 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13. This period can also be compared widi what Hakim Bey calls “temporary autonomous zone.” Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, PoeticTerrorism (New York, 1985). For a discussion of temporary autonomous zones during die early period of postsocialist transition, see Yurchak, “Gagarin and die Rave Kids.“

14. Programma “Piatoe Koleso”: “Lenin-grib” (nineteen years since die broadcast), host Svedana Sorokina, 18 April 2010, Fifdi Channel of St. Petersburg television, at www. 5-tv.ru/programs/broadcast/504896/ (last accessed 15 March 2011)

15. Mishenin, “Tikhii Sholokhov,” 2008.

16. Ibid.

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18. As attested by numerous historical precedents of doctoring photographs.

19. Cephalium, from Greek kefali (head)—a real term describing a flat, round, woolen or bristly “head” at the top of a cactus, from Dictionary: Botanical and Technical Terminology at http://www.cactus-art.biz/note-book/Dictionary/Dictionary_C/dictionary_C.htm (last accessed 15 March 2011).

20. Needless to say, Kurekhin exploited the ignorance of most viewers about such issues. In fact, the function of the cephalium is well known—this is where “flower buds and fruits are formed” in a cactus. From Dictionary: Botanical and Technical Terminology.

21. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever.

22. Boyer, Dominic and Yurchak, Alexei, “American Stiob: Or, What Late-Socialist Aesthetics of Parody Reveal about Contemporary Political Culture in the West,” CulturalAnthropology 2b, no. 2 (May 2010): 179–221.Google Scholar

23. Kurekhin's wife, Anastasia, later remembered that although he thought about faking perestroika media for a while, there was an immediate model on which he based his television appearance. A few months earlier he had watched a serious television program according to which newly discovered facts about the death of the poet Sergei Esenin suggested that he was killed, rather than committed suicide as was commonly believed. In the program this claim was “based on completely absurd facts. Showing photographs of Esenin's funeral [the program's author] provided such comments: ‘Notice where this person is looking; and see, another person is looking in the opposite direction. Which proves that Esenin was killed.'” Having watched this program Kurekhin said: “In this way anything at all can be proven.” Elena Pomazan, “Anastasiia Kurekhina: Sergei byl ochen’ svetlym chelovekom,” Komsomol´skaia pravda, 18 August 2005 at kp.ru/daily/23563/118278 (last accessed 15 March 2011).

24. Groys, Boris, “Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From Artwork to Art Documentation,” Art Power (Cambridge, Mass., 2008), 54.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., 58.

26. Groys also traces the shift to art documentation in contemporary western art. Ibid, 59-60.

27. Yurchak, Alexei, “Necro-Utopia: The Politics of Indistinction and the Aesthetics of the Non-Soviet,” Current Anthropology 49, no. 2 (April 2008): 199–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Yurchak, Alexei, “Suspending the Political: Late-Soviet Artistic Experiments on the Margins of the State,” Poetics Today 29, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 713–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the broader context in which such groups operated, see Yurchak, Everything Was Forever.

29. Landesman, Peter, “A 20th-century Master Scam,” New York Times Magazine, 18 July 1999, 32, 37 Google Scholar. See also Salisbury, Laney and Sujo, Aly, Provenance: How a Con Man and aForger Rewrote the History of Modern Art (New York, 2009)Google Scholar.

30. Landesman, “A 20th-century Master Scam,” 37.

31. David Cohen, “Review of Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, Provenance: How a ConMan and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art,” in ArtCritical.com, at http://artcridcal.com/DavidCohen/2009/DCProvenance.htm (last accessed 15 March 2011). Emphasis in the original.

32. Foucault, Michel, “What Is an Author?” in Faubion, James D., ed., Aesthetics,Method, and Epistemology, vol. 2 of Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984 (New York, 1998), 205–22Google Scholar.

33. Ibid., 210, 221.

34. In the mid-1990s, Dugin was also associated with Eduard Limonov's National- Bolshevik Party, the NBP. Later the two had a falling out and became bitter political rivals. On Eurasianism, see Laruelle, Marlene, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington, D.C., 2008)Google Scholar; Shekhovtsov, Anton, “Aleksandr Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism: The New Right a. la Russe, Religion Compass 3, no. 4 (June 2009): 697–716 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shlapentokh, Dmitry, “Dugin Eurasianism: A Window on the Minds of the Russian Elite or an Intellectual Ploy?“ Studies in East European Thought 59, no. 3 (September 2007): 215–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Oushakine, Sergei, “The Russian Tragedy: From Ethnic Trauma to Ethnic Vitality,” Patriotism ofDespair: Nation, War, and Loss in Russia (Ithaca, 2009), 79–129 Google Scholar

35. “Velikii mistifikator Sergei Kurekhin,” Pravda.ru, 17June 2005, at http://www.pravda.ru/culture/music/modern/17-06-2005/51300-kurekhin-0 (last accessed 15 March 2011).

36. Chernov's, Vladimir introductory notes to Aleksandr Kushnir's “Kurekhin,” Ogonek, 5June 2000, 48–53 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

37. Andrei Pirogov and Tekle Gil´man, “Neopredelimyi Kurekhin,” March 2001, at http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/200478/ (last accessed 15 March 2011).

38. “Interv'iu s Sergeem Debizhevym (4 maia 2004 goda),” in Karklit, “Fenomen Sergeia Kurekhina.“

39. “Velikii mistifikator Sergei Kurekhin.“

40. “Pamiati Sergeia Kurekhina,” Music Library, at http://muslib.ru/band5444_biography.html (last accessed 15 March 2011).

41. Programma “PiatoeKoleso“: “Lenin-grib.“

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43. Mazin, Viktor, “Inoplanetianin,” Krasnyi, April 2004, 38 Google Scholar.

44. Ibid.

45. Sadur, Ekaterina, “Sergei Kurekhin: Chernyi romantik,” Domovoi, no. 1 (2000)Google Scholar, at http://darlok.tomsk.ru/content/kuryokhin/black_romantic/Wcbf03dde48b97.htm (last accessed 15 March 2011).

46. Dmitrii Galkovskii, “Grib: Rusofoby i fungofily,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 29 April 2004. Kurekhin's death made the rare disease famous and led to the proliferation of stories about making death part of a scientific experiment, faking it for a joke or in order to change one's identity and name. According to a 2005 bestselling novel by Pavel Krusanov, Amerikanshaia dyrka (American Hole), in 1996 Kurekhin staged his death, changed his name and appearance, and relocated to the city of Pskov, where he runs a firm specializing in outrageous practical jokes. The most recent is designed to fool the United States.

47. Tereshkova, Ol´ga, “Kultura. Sergei Kurekhin: Ego urok drugim nauka?” Moskovskiikomsomolets, no. 269 (30 November 2000)Google Scholar, at http://dlib.eastview.com/sources/article.jsp?id=77569 (last accessed 15 March 2011).

48. “Viktor Toporov: Kurekhin pomogaet zagranitse,” Vzglyad. Delovaia gazeta, 26 October 2005, at http://www.vz.ru/columns/2005/10/26/10913.html (last accessed 15 March 2011).

49. Galkovskii, “Grib.“

50. Sergei Sholokhov, interview with Tat'iana Moskvina on the program Tikhii dom:Pamiati Kurekhina. See also Tat'iana Moskvina, Muzhskaia tetrad', at http://librusll.ilive.ro/tatjana_moskvina_muzhskaja_tetrad_57142.html (last accessed 15 March 2011).

51. Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide, today.answers.com/topic/the-ways-of-freedom (accessed 17 December 2010; no longer accessible).

52. Bruce Coates in Rubberneck, British magazine of experimental music, at http://www.btinternet.com/∼rubberneck/cdlistll.html (accessed 17 May 2006; no longer accessible).

53. Review for New York's Downtown Music Gallery, www.downtownmusicgallery. com/Main/news/20010413.htm (last accessed 15 March 2011). Some musicians attribute the remarkable speed of Kurekhin's piano playing to a “very non-academic position of his hands.” See, for example, Sergey Letov, “Brief History of New Improvisatory Music in Soviet Russia,” Special Radio, at www.specialradio.net/art/003.shtml (last accessed 15 March 2011).

54. “Velikii mistifikator Sergei Kurekhin.” See also Chernov, Introduction.

55. Ivanov, Sergei A., Blazhennyepokhaby: Kul´turnaia istoriia iurodstva (Moscow, 2005), 382 Google Scholar.

56. This position should not be confused with immorality—moral judgment was not suspended but instead the unspoken assumptions behind moral judgments were explored.

57. In addition to Kurekhin, two prominent examples of practioners of this politics of indistincuon in Leningrad were the Necrorealists and the Mir/ki. See my “Necro-Utopia“ and “Suspending the Political.“

58. Sergei Kurekhin, interview, St. Petersburg, 13 April 1995.

59. Serres, The Parasite.

60. Sergei Kurekhin, interview, St. Petersburg, 13 April 1995.

61. The two are the musicians Sergei and Egor Letov, who participated in Pop- Mekhanika. See Sergei Zharikov, Sergei Letov, and Egor Letov, “Paradigma svastiki. Nedobitaia kontora,” Kontrkul´tura, December 2001, at http://www.laertsky.com/sk/sk_003.htm (last accessed 15 March 2011).

62. Aleksandr Lipnitskii, interview with Aleksandr Dugin on the program Elovaia submarina, Nostalgia television channel, July 2006.

63. Galkovskii, “Grib.” A similar critique was produced by western observers; see Ivor Stodolsky, “Lenin's a Mushroom and Hitler a Superstar: Poshlost´ and the Politics of Russian Steb: Extremism and Irony in Russian Nonconformist Culture” (paper presented at the European Consortium for Political Research, Budapest, September 2005).

64. Galkovskii, “Grib.“

65. Konstantin Kedrov, “Postmodemizm, khot´ imia diko … ,” Russkii kur'er, 7 July 2004, at http://www.sakharov-center.ru/museum/exhibitionhall/religion_notabene/rusk70704.htm (last accessed 15 March 2011).

66. Yurchak, Everything Was Forever.

67. Sogrin, V., “Levaia, pravaia gde storona? Razmyshleniia o sovremennykh politcheskikh diskussiiakh,” Kommunist, 1990, no. 3 (February): 36 Google Scholar. See a more detailed discussion of this argument in Alexei Yurchak, “If Lenin Were Alive He Would Know What to Do: Banished Life of die Leader,” Qui Parle, 19 Fall 2011.

68. Some people who watched the program later published their memories of it. In 1991 and in 1995, during fieldwork, I also spoke with many viewers about their experiences.

69. A participant in the Russian Web site Dnevniki (Diaries), submitted on 15 March 2006,at http://www.diary.ru/search/?q=%EF%E5%F0%E5%E4%E0%F7%E0+%EB%E5%ED%E8%ED+%E3%F0%E8%E1 (last accessed 15 March 2011).

70. Svedana Nosova, interview, St. Petersburg, Summer 1995.

71. Sergei Sholokhov, interview with Konstantin Raikin on the program Tikhii dom:Pamiati Kurekhina.

72. An example of how this may work in the west is the group The Yes Men. See Boyer and Yurchak, “American Stiob.“

73. Serres, The Parasite, 232