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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

There 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/

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The "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-e...

I still think there is an important difference here that made the joke[1] work in the USSR. I believe it wouldn't have worked in the US the same way.

In America, when children grow up, parents could have that talk with them about how George Washington really was a great guy and how much they appreciate if their children wouldn't cut down the cherry tree in the garden but also about how this story about George Washington is just that - a story.

I wasn't there at the time, so this is just my take on it: I imagine in the USSR it could have been dangerous to talk to children like that and one way out was to exaggerate the stories until the child notices what's going on. Now daddy Sergei Kurekhin was doing that to the whole Soviet Union - and that's why they laughed about it.

[1] I call it a joke and not a hoax, because I think hoax kind of misses the point. I wasn't there at the time but this is my opinion: I don't think anyone believed it, I think people didn't say so partly because they didn't want to destroy the joke and partly because this was still the USSR.

Annecdotal Hear-say, but I have spoken to a few people who grew up under the Soviets. They all had stories of their parents being very explicit about what was happening and being told exactly what they could not say in public. Then again these are people who ended up in the US so maybe they were atypical.

No, this is totally not how it was. People used to speak quite freely at home (aside from when Stalin was in power, and even then).

You can't speak freely at home when your little children hear you, because there is a risk they will repeat your words in public, which can get you in trouble. It's probably also quite dangerous with teenagers around; they may get a wrong idea about appearing cool to their peers by saying something that can't be say, and then get reported on.

First, you need to make sure your children understand the magnitude of danger from repeating what they heard at home. That requires some maturity and intelligence, but more importantly the idea that "there are important truths that you can get punished for saying in a wrong place" is itself one of those important truths that you can get punished for saying in a wrong place, so you either need to approach this very very carefully or take a risk and hope for the best.

Are you talking out of experience or just theorizing? Because I was there. People were telling Gorbachov & Reagan jokes all the time in their kitchens, that was just a normal part of life.

Gorbachev and Reagan, sure. Even Brezhnev and Carter. But by then you'd have to tell particularly strong ones to get sent to a labor camp, unlike under previous regimes.

Well, I was born in the 80's, so I only witnessed that. However the famous Soviet "kitchen conversations" existed even before that.

Kids these days...

I am sure there were kitchen conversations even under Stalin, but to far less extent -- most conversationists ended up in some unpleasant places.

Experience. I was in the role of the teenager.

Yes, some jokes were okay, especially the toothless ones. Like, making a joke about being poorer or having worse quality of products than the West was relatively safer than making a joke about party members killing each other or hurting random people.

It also depended on who could hear you, and what kind of a job your parents had. The better job, the greater risk of losing your job for saying wrong stuff.

Also, "speak quite freely at home" is more than just jokes. I am pretty sure most people would not feel safe discussing The Gulag Archipelago at home.

Well, I was talking about jokes. I do agree that people were more careful about voicing serious dissent, but then who actually did that? A very small handful of political activists, the rest just never went there, because a) usually their friends and family already agreed with them about politics b) everyone felt powerless to change anything c) everyone was too preoccupied with survival in the tough Soviet reality.

I think you read 1984 too many times. What you wrote is a pure fantasy of a mind who grew up in cold era Western propaganda.

It truly boggles the mind when some kids from Berkeley (or Montreal, as the case may be) start telling people who actually lived it that it was all some "cold era Western propaganda" (whatever the hell this is supposed to mean).

Will you tell us next that Holocaust is just some Zionist propaganda?

They spoke freely but they still faced consequences. I know of someone who protested against the party in the early 80s in Moscow, only to undergo interrogation by the KGB and jailed for three weeks. Their pet bird died because they simply “disappeared” for that time and no one knew where they went.

Protesting publicly is one thing. Talking in your own kitchen is another. I guess some unlucky people got busted for that, but generally it was safe, as long as no one deliberately ratted you out (which didn't happen much since Stalin died). And even then, circumstances needed to be really hard against you.

Also, it obviously matters what it is you're saying. Most people just told jokes about the communist regime and talked about how shitty life was. Nobody cared about that as long as they kept it private.

You can "speak freely in private" because it's not free speech, which requires a public space. It's like saying "I am allowed to show my face under this bag I am required to carry over my head". Yes, you are, because you're not really showing your face, as long as that bag is in place.

And why would they (the KGB) have cared (about jokes)? The venting of steam, instead of letting it build up and affect change, would have to be invented if people didn't do it voluntarily. That kind of self-deprecating humour is all over our media these days, too, we love to bring up important subjects to channel them into harmless stuff, just because we can't pretend it's not there, but also not allow ourselves to actually see it and be serious in its presence.

It sounds like you're trying to disprove an argument I never made. Let me be clear about this: there was no free speech in the USSR and you couldn't sound criticism publicly.

But some assume that the absence of free speech means that everyone is either brainwashed or so terrified they are afraid to speak their minds at home. I just had to point out this is not how it was in the late USSR.

Dissidence was managed in the USSR. Individuals would be allowed to say enough things that would contribute to self-incrimination. When it was convenient for the party, the “debt” was called and individuals would then be held responsible for their actions.

The very point was that at least some double digit portion of population actually did.

The point is also that there is a not that small category of people who are ready to believe really everything for as long as they hear that from a smart looking guy in a suite, and it is "dumb and simple enough to believe." This the very thing going on now in Easter Europe with ultraright maxim "refugees steal your welfare" and "Soros conspiracy"

Now, this is being weaponized big time, against the US this time. It took Kremlin probably just few hundred man hours to make one of such guys to attempt assassination of Hillary Clinton.

Now imagine how things will turn if they will double down on that.

In American folklore, George Washington occupies this same "honest boy becomes national founder" niche.

And if you fold a dollar bill correctly, you can turn George Washington into a mushroom.

Coincidence? I think not.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mabiols67J1rnkn4oo2_1280....

I think there definitely is some similarity between Kuryokhin and Zoshchenko. "Stories about Lenin" by M. Zoshchenko have some absurd/satire elements. And these elements were almost invisible for many Soviet citizens. They started to notice these moments in the text only after the dissolution of USSR.

Sounds like a "Lenin or Washington" game waiting to happen.

You can find the same stories about Stalin coming from his "fans". How he recommended one person to attend to some baptist church to learn English. Or stories about North Korean leaders, what wise things they teach workers when they fail. There were attempts to replace Christian symbols with Communist symbols. Like they replaced Christian trinity with Communist trinity: Lenin, Marx, Engels, for example. So they had to make up lots of legends about Lenin to make him new Jesus. How he was smart and when he was in jail he wrote with some sort of juice that made his texts invisible for guards.

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