‘Lenin was a mushroom‘
was a highly influential televised hoax by Soviet musician Sergey
Kuryokhin and reporter Sergey Sholokhov. It was first broadcast in May
1991 on Leningrad Television. The hoax took the form of an interview on
the television program ‘Pyatoe Koleso’ (‘The Fifth Wheel’). In the
interview, Kuryokhin, impersonating a historian, narrated his findings
that Vladimir Lenin consumed large quantities of psychedelic mushrooms
and eventually became a mushroom himself.