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Why did Lenin turn into a mushroom? Inside the bizarre prank that fooled Soviet Russia

Why did Lenin turn into a mushroom? Inside the bizarre prank that fooled Soviet Russia

In the final days of the Soviet Union, a shocking revelation came to light that would change everything about the revered revolutionary Vladimir Lenin

Digital photo collage depicting a cluster of wild bolete mushrooms, with a black-and-white portrait of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin superimposed onto the stem of the central, largest mushroom

Jonny Wilkes

Published: November 1, 2026 at 3:00 PM

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In 1917, Vladimir Lenin masterminded the October Revolution and established the world’s first communist state in Russia; in 1922, he became the first head of the Soviet Union; and in 1924, he died of a stroke at the age of 53.

Then, on 17 May 1991, Lenin became a mushroom.

That was when The Fifth Wheel, a Russian television show praised for its investigative journalism and watched by millions, aired an hour-long interview from host Sergey Sholokhov with an enigmatic scholar named Sergey Kuryokhin. Introduced as “a famous political figure and movie actor”, Kuryokhin claimed that Lenin, after years of psychedelic mushrooms, had actually transformed into one.

Historical black-and-white photograph of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin lying in state, surrounded by floral tributes and resting his head on a white pillow

Vladimir Lenin lying in state following his death in 1924. Nearly seven decades later, a bizarre conspiracy theory about Lenin transforming into a mushroom emerged | Credit: Getty Images

What was his proof for the theory?

Mushrooms, he said, were made of radio waves and had distinct personalities, so consuming them replaced Lenin’s human personality with the collective consciousness of the fungi. What’s more, Lenin’s metamorphosis had taken place before the revolution.

Now, given that the old revolutionary had overseen a brutal period of mass killings and political repressions shortly after seizing power, not many people would describe him as a fun guy.

Read more | Why does Putin blame this infamous Russian revolutionary for Ukraine’s independence?

But Kuryokhin, with the straightest of faces and sat in an office lined with bookcases and a desk heaving with documents to add an intellectual air to proceedings, zoomed through his ‘evidence’ for his outlandish theory.

He presented a letter from Lenin in which the communist leader mentioned feeling good after eating some mushrooms, a photo that seemingly showed a mushroom on Lenin’s desk, and a diagram that showed how the shape of an armoured car from which Lenin once gave a speech strongly resembled mushroom roots. Lenin spelled backwards, Kuryokhin pointed out, is ‘ninel’, a French dish made of mushrooms.

To add some clout to the claim, there was also a short, pre-recorded interview with a biologist who specialised in fungi. It did not mention, however, Lenin, radio waves or the possibility of humans turning into mushrooms.

A young man in a black leather jacket and red shirt playing a grand piano whose top is covered with unusual objects, tools, locks, and a small mirror reflecting his face

Musician Sergey Kuryokhin in Leningrad, c1985. He convincingly presented 'evidence' for the mushroom theory, causing mass confusion | Credit: Getty Images

Did anyone believe that Lenin was a mushroom?

Suffice to say that viewers were left confused. The Fifth Wheel was a trusted show that had revealed clandestine details about Soviet history. This was a time of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), which brought major reforms, reduced state censorship and encouraged open discussion like never before. And with the Soviet Union just months away from collapsing, this was a febrile period when Russians no longer unthinkingly venerated the communist regime and its past.

In this perfect storm, it became clear that not everyone who watched the interview realised that the notion of Lenin being a mushroom was an obvious prank. In fact, some people fell for it. Put simply, it was so ridiculous and unlikely that it might well have been true, and certainly a truth that the Soviet regime would have covered up.

Read more | This secret speech gave people heart attacks: when Khrushchev denounced Stalin

What was the meaning of the prank?

Kuryokhin was actually an avant-garde musician and artist always looking to provoke, while Sholokhov devised the whole thing to illustrate the dangers of blindly trusting the media by testing the credulity of his audience.

It worked, as even both men breaking into laughter halfway through the broadcast did not give the hoax away. The station was soon flooded with concerned and bewildered calls, and Sholokhov later claimed that a group of ageing communists visited their local party headquarters in Leningrad to demand an answer.

An exasperated official had to assure them that Lenin had, indeed, never been a mushroom, since “a mammal cannot be a plant”.

Authors

Jonny WilkesFreelance writer

Jonny Wilkes is a former staff writer for BBC History Revealed, and he continues to write for both the magazine and HistoryExtra. He has BA in History from the University of York.