Victor Pelevin’s novel Generation P (1999) is a milestone in Russian literary history. With his deep understanding of Russia’s zeitgeist during the 1990s, Pelevin captured the plunge of an entire country into chaos as it sought to adapt to a post-Soviet world. Russia’s public sphere with its parliament, mass media, and cultural industry became the discursive battlefield for a multitude of competing narratives which speculated on the country’s national identity and political purpose, reassessing its past, and envisioning its future: was Russia a western country which should accordingly adopt the model of liberal market democracy? Was it a Eurasian country with a messianic mission to bridge the west and the east? Should it restore the former Russian and Soviet empires? Ultimately, should Russianness be defined in civic terms or in ethnic, cultural, and linguistic ones?Footnote 1 Through its piercing irony, Generation P illustrates how the frantic attempts to redefine what it means to be Russian gave rise to a generation of “New Russians” who were shaped by global pop culture, the ruins of Soviet culture, and the depths of pre-Soviet Russian history.
The body of scholarship that emerged after the novel’s publication elucidates the literary techniques that underpin the novel’s postmodernist critique of the 1990s’ quest for a new national identity: from the conflation of “high” and “low” narratives to the thematization of ontological questions pertaining to the nature of reality and to the primordial emptiness or void.Footnote 2 In this context, scholars tend to emphasize the instrumental role that the novel attributes to the advertising industry and consumer capitalism.Footnote 3 Indeed, the novel depicts advertising specialists as the engineers not only of the New Russian identity but also of Russia’s political, economic and military landscapes. This idea finds its embodiment in the novel’s protagonist, Vavilen Tatarskii: a salesman at a commercial stall and once-aspiring writer who becomes a successful creator of advertisements in post-Soviet Russia’s rapidly developing advertising industry. He ends up being Russia’s almighty ruler-behind-the-scenes by dictating Russia’s course of action through the content that is aired on television.
But there is also an element that springs up throughout the novel and exerts agency over both Tatarskii’s advertising activity and the construction of New Russia. In the rare cases that scholars mention this element, they tend to treat it as yet another detail in the heap of postmodern pastiche. Yet a close analysis of the instances in which this element appears suggests its narratological centrality for the critique of Russia’s quest for its new identity. This element is the entheogenic mushroom known as mukhomor.Footnote 4
While the term Amanita muscaria maps most closely to the folk taxonomy that characterizes mukhomor, the two terms are not equivalent. The term mukhomor is more capacious, covering the species Amanita muscaria but also other species, such as the closely related and also entheogenic species Amanita pantherina (Figure 1). Generation P relies on folk taxonomy throughout with the scientific binomial Amanita muscaria never used. Instead, the novel features the term mukhomor or, occasionally, the all-encompassing term “grib” (mushroom). Both terms are used in the novel to denote mushrooms that belong to the genus Amanita, including both Amanita muscaria and Amanita pantherina. The novel distinguishes the two species based on their colors: red mukhomor (krasnyi mukhomor) or brown mukhomor (korichnevyi mukhomor), respectively. In this article, we follow Generation P in using the term mukhomor to discuss the function that the mushroom fulfils in the novel. Where further taxonomic resolution is required, such as between the colors of mukhomor (red or brown) or between their effects, we use Latin binomials: Amanita muscaria and Amanita pantherina, respectively.
Figure 1. The two central fungi of Generation P: Amanita muscaria (main image) and Amanita pantherina (insert). Image of Amanita muscaria by Bernard Spragg and published under a Public Domain license. Image of Amanita pantherina originally taken by Wikipedia User Σ64 and published under a CC BY 3.0 DEED license.
Furthermore, the translation that we use interprets the term mukhomor as “fly-agaric.”Footnote 5 While we retain the term “fly-agaric” in the passages that we quote from the novel, we use the term mukhomor in our commentary. This is due to the cultural-specific connotations of the term mukhomor and because the folk taxonomies of mukhomor and the fly-agaric are distinct in that they refer to different genetic populations of mushrooms.Footnote 6 Thus the terms cannot be considered synonymous.
In this article we argue that in Generation P mukhomor is an agent that generates visions of Russianness. The term “Russianness” here is used as equivalent to terms such as russkostʹ or russkaia identichnostʹ—terms that embed in their semantics the difference between a self-identification with an “ethnos” (russkii) and with a civil society (rossiiskii).Footnote 7 Such representations of mukhomor reinforce the novel’s ironic stance towards imperial narratives which envisioned Russia’s future as a return to a mythical but allegedly authentic Russian past. The novel ironizes such narratives by underpinning the hallucinatory nature of this past; hence the term visions in the title of this article. In a typically Pelevinian manner the novel suggests that, if there is at all a future that can qualify as authentically Russian, then it should be one where the very notion of Russianness is abandoned. What renders this future authentically Russian is the genetic origin of mukhomor in the Russian hinterland—the very element that enables a view of the world as such, devoid of symbolic order and all identities.
We begin by introducing the biological profile of scientific fungal species associated with the folk taxonomic concept of mukhomor. In this section, we outline the Siberian origins and main properties of mukhomor which are most relevant to the analysis of Generation P, and highlight the use of mukhomor for entheogenic purposes in cultural practices of indigenous populations in Siberia. We then summarize the cultural myths surrounding mukhomor that were developed in the underground art worlds of late socialism. Situating Pelevin in those underground milieus, we approach Generation P as a novel that embodies what Dennis Ioffe calls the “grand narrative of mukhomor,” or, more pointedly “the mythopoetic theme” of mukhomor-induced beliefs about the nature of reality.Footnote 8 Through close analysis of selected passages from the novel, we demonstrate that the representations of mukhomor consumption not only propel the plot, but also advance the novel’s critique regarding the reinvention of Russia’s identity after the fall of the Soviet Union. We then juxtapose the representations of mukhomor to representations of other drugs, such as alcohol, cocaine, and LSD, demonstrating the nihilistic attitude that these cultivate towards the void that underlies consumers’ lives. In concluding, we discuss how Pelevin’s treatment of mukhomor corresponds to the ironic modes that feature in his works.
Despite almost three decades passing since the first publication of Generation P, and despite its plot being rooted in the realities of the 1990s, the novel’s grip on the mechanisms by which Russia sought to reinvent itself cannot be more pertinent to the present moment. Russia’s increasing authoritarianism since the 2010s and international aggression culminating in in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its geopolitical turn towards Eurasia, the consolidation of neo-traditionalist ideologies and the recycling of Soviet myths can be viewed as symptomatic of a state-instituted reimagination of Russia as the center of an eastward-looking empire with a messianic mission to save the “Russian lands” from a “western hegemony.”Footnote 9 A retrospective reading of Generation P with an emphasis on the treatment of mukhomor revives Pelevin’s critique of such imperial narratives; narratives that rest upon a collectively shared belief in the realness of an imagination.
Mukhomor: Properties, Origins, and Uses in Cultural Practices
Amanita muscaria (L.) Lam., the scientific species that most closely maps to the folk taxonomy species of mukhomor, is distinct in origin and effect from the so-called magic mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe. The active components of Psilocybe species—psilocin and psilocybin—are seritogenic, meaning that they primarily affect the production and reuptake of serotonin and impact on the sympathetic nervous system.Footnote 10 In contrast, the active components of Amanita muscaria—ibotenic acid and muscimol—are GABAergic, causing depressant or sedative-hypnotic effects.Footnote 11 Other components, such as muscarine, cause physical effects, such as salivation, stomach cramps, and blurred vision. Notably, while the symptoms of ingesting Psilocybe species or other synthetic psychedelics, such as LSD, may be somewhat predictable (they are confined primarily to visual hallucinations), the symptoms caused by ingesting Amanita muscaria are not.Footnote 12 Indeed, due to its unpredictable nature the classification of Amanita muscaria as a hallucinogenic or even a psychedelic remains a contested subject.Footnote 13 The closely related species Amanita pantherina, which is a brown-capped species, is generally considered to produce a greater entheogenic effect due to higher average percentages of muscimol.Footnote 14 For both species, it remains unclear whether the depressant or sedative-hypnotic effects that consumers experience are of hallucinatory nature. It is precisely because of this uncertainty that Amanita species are used in spiritual practices as it is possible that, if not hallucinatory, its effects are revelatory of the primordial essence of things.
While mukhomor grows across the world, it has a particularly long-standing history in Russia. Indigenous communities in Siberia, including Chukotka and Kamchatka, have used mukhomor extensively for spiritual purposes: a use which has been reported and recorded for centuries by visitors to the region.Footnote 15 For example, Stepan Krasheninnikov, the first western explorer to share his survey of the Kamchatka region with audiences outside Russia, published his report of mukhomor use by indigenous communities in 1755. In it, he highlights that “all those who have eaten the mukhomor unanimously affirm that all their extravagant actions at the time are carried out on orders of the mukhomor, which secretly commands them.”Footnote 16 Joseph Kopec, a Polish brigadier who visited the Kamchatka region in 1797, recorded his own experiences of mukhomor consumption, detailing the common belief that the mushroom endowed users with clairvoyance and enabled them to “see [their] own future.”Footnote 17 Similarly, the German naturalist Georg H. Langsdorf published in 1809 his experiences with the Kamchatkan Koryak people.Footnote 18 In his account, he indicates that the Koryaks preferred using mukhomor over vodka.Footnote 19 The publication of the mycologist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke’s Seven Sisters of Sleep in 1860 emphasizes that the use of mukhomor was closely associated with the Kamchatka and Siberia regions of Russia.Footnote 20 Cooke characterizes mukhomor as “the exile of Siberia” emphasizing in this way that the mushroom had found a “home and a refuge, a kingdom and a court” in Siberia due to the absence of other narcotics.Footnote 21 Because of its popularity, Cooke’s book contributed significantly to disseminating knowledge about Amanita muscaria among western audiences.
The majority of primary accounts were made widely available only after the publication of the ethnomycologist Gordon R. Wasson’s groundbreaking study entitled Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality in 1968. His study stood out by arguing the central influence of mukhomor on mainstream religion and philosophy. Wasson emphasizes the Russian origin of the mukhomor cult and contends that “soma”—the ritual drink found in the Hindu Rig Veda and which was produced by a plant whose identity is unknown today—was actually produced using Amanita muscaria.
Many scholars have shown interest in Wasson’s claims, especially in the one concerning the migration of the mukhomor cult from modern-day Russia abroad. After Soma’s publication scholars began to explore further whether such migration facilitated—and perhaps even introduced—the entheogenic use of mukhomor to a variety of geographies.Footnote 22 The success of Soma also drew more attention to his earlier two-volume work entitled Mushrooms, Russia and History (1957) which he co-authored with his wife, Valentina Pavlovna Wasson. With only 1000 copies produced, the book’s title became more important than its content in framing Russia as the ancestral home of mycology, and of mukhomor more specifically.Footnote 23
In line with Wasson’s claims, the Amanita muscaria species complex has been found to have a Beringian origin. This fact suggests an evolutionary origin for the mushroom in the Russian hinterland, with Siberian populations constituting a distinct genetic clade.Footnote 24 This taxonomic peculiarity around Amanita muscaria likely feeds into the unpredictability of its symptoms, as differences in proportions of ibotenic acid, muscimol, and other biochemicals such as muscarine will result in a different experience. Such difference is reinforced by popular rumors that attest to the fact that Siberian specimens are allegedly superior in terms of their effects in comparison to others collected outside the region.Footnote 25
It is only during the 1990s that Amanita muscaria’s study and use as an entheogen exploded outside Russia.Footnote 26 As Russia opened up to the world after 1991, amateur mycologists and ethnomycologists visited Kamchatka in 1994 and 1995, and Siberia in 2003. The visits to Kamchataka, for example, were organized by the American-based mycological organization Fungophile in order to collect mukhomor and interview Koryak people about its use.Footnote 27 Mukhomor also became particularly popular among various American countercultures, in part, because of legal loopholes that enabled it to both be sold and consumed legally.Footnote 28
While the systematic study of the Siberian specimens of Amanita muscaria is a relatively recent phenomenon, the mythology surrounding the mushroom’s properties and use seized the imagination long before the 1990s, especially in those participating in underground artistic circles in the Soviet Union and in counterculture circles abroad. The interest in mukhomor increased substantially in the mid-twentieth century because of wider interest in psychoactive substances. The unpredictability of symptoms following mukhomor use and the ambiguity surrounding the nature of its effects form part of its cultural myth. Whether within the confines of the Soviet Union or outside, mukhomor has been imagined as an authentically Russian mushroom.
Mukhomor in the Imagination of the late-Soviet Underground
The appearance of mukhomor in artistic works of the late-Soviet period coincides with the revival of interest in organized religion, occultism, and creation myths of ancient civilizations among the underground worlds during the 1960s and 1970s.Footnote 29 Cultural output from the late-Soviet period that features representations of mukhomor tend to show awareness of both the Siberian origins of the mushroom and its entheogenic properties. Despite the limited possibilities for cultural and intellectual exchange outside the Soviet Union, some of these works also show awareness of influential ethnomycological studies published abroad, such as those by the Wassons. Altogether, this mix of information gave rise to what Dennis Ioffe calls the “grand narrative of the mukhomor,” namely “the mythopoetic theme” of mukhomor-induced beliefs about the nature of reality.Footnote 30
Perhaps the most famous manifestation of the mukhomor theme in Russian culture is the television-performance by the Leningrad-based artist Sergei Kurekhin aired on national television in January 1991.Footnote 31 With his characteristic stiobby irony, Kurekhin boldly claimed that Vladimir Lenin was a mushroom.Footnote 32 Specifically, Kurekhin framed mukhomor as instrumental to Russia’s historical developments of the twentieth century by claiming a connection between the consumption of mukhomor and the formation of the Soviet state. Over the course of seventy minutes Kurekhin, aided by the journalist Sergei Sholokhov, presented a selection of evidence for his claim, including interviews with unaware mycological experts. Central to his argument was the importance of mushrooms (and mukhomor specifically) to Russian culture. For example, he emphasized that, like all Russians, Lenin loved mushrooms. He also argued that the properties of mukhomor were well known to Russian peasants and that the mushroom has been used for centuries among them.Footnote 33 Due to its broadcast on national television, the hoax quickly entered the consciousness of the Russian public, despite doubts about the extent to which the hoax meaningfully convinced people of its premise.Footnote 34
Kurekhin’s engagement with the mukhomor theme is only one example of this deeply-embedded trend among artists and writers of late-Soviet underground circles. As Ioffe demonstrates in his article “Griby i Mukhi” (2024), the mukhomor theme was especially popular among Moscow Conceptualist circles: from the Moscow-based art collective named after the mushroom—Mukhomor—to Andrei Monastyrskii’s mystical performances and the mukhomor-shaped sculptures by Elena Elagina and Igorʹ Makarevich.Footnote 35 Similarly to Kurekhin’s hoax, works by artists who began their careers in the conceptualist circles feature mukhomor as a tool for an ironic exposure of the simulative nature of reality, and specifically Soviet reality.
The philosopher Mikhail Epstein, who himself was part of these circles, argued that the hypernormalization and rather ritualistic reproduction of representations of everyday life in the Soviet Union generated a Soviet “hyperreality”: “a phantasmic creation of mass communication” or an “ideological mirage.”Footnote 36 This Soviet hyperreality, according to Epstein, had no point of reference outside its representations.Footnote 37 Drawing explicitly on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and simulation, Epstein suggested that the more these representations were reproduced, the more “real” they were perceived as by the masses. It is this “Soviet hyperreality” that the mukhomor theme expresses in Moscow conceptualist art.
The mukhomor theme, as Ioffe contends, carries over in the art of the younger generation of Moscow conceptualists represented by the group “Inspection Medical Hermeneutics.” Specifically, Ioffe demonstrates the above by analyzing a novel titled The Mythogenic Love of Casts, which was written by two members of this group—Pavel Peppershtein and Sergei Anufriev—and was published in 1999. For Ioffe, this novel is “a mushroom-eating epic narrative” and he argues that “the psychotropic mushrooms help ‘transform’ [the protagonist], the communist Dunaev, into a sort of ‘new species.”’Footnote 38
It is precisely within the trends of these underground circles that Pelevin’s use of the mukhomor theme in Generation P must be viewed.Footnote 39 Pelevin was no stranger to the late-Soviet underground. Because of the extremely low profile that he maintained throughout his career, it is hard to situate him as a participant in any of these underground circles based on concrete documentation. However, his occasional participation in some of them is known by word of mouth and reports of people who participated in mutual circles with him.Footnote 40 Regardless, Pelevin’s works show acute awareness of the developments taking place in the late-Soviet underground, and the mukhomor theme is no exception.
Published in the same year as Peppershtein and Anufriev’s novel, Generation P depicts the transformation of its protagonist, Tatarskii, which represents the transformation of the last Soviet generation into a generation of New Russians. As the following sections argue, the role of the mukhomor in this transformative process is instrumental: mukhomor is an agent that generates visions of Russia’s future.
Mukhomor and The Hallucinatory Nature of Reality
Generation P shows awareness of the myths surrounding mukhomor use. It also shows awareness of the distinction between the symptoms caused by the consumption of Amanita muscaria and Amanita pantherina. Depending on the type of mukhomor that Tatarskii consumes, he is shown to experience hallucinations or revelations of some sort of truth. Whether hallucinatory or revelatory, these visions are shown to have a direct impact on Tatarskii’s advertising activity, and ultimately on his decisions regarding the construction of the new Russian political landscape.
Mukhomor sets the novel in motion and drives it to its conclusion. The instrumental role that mukhomor plays within Generation P is suggested already by the first reference to the mushroom, which appears at the beginning of the novel. This reference is part of a lengthy passage quoted verbatim from a long-forgotten pseudo-scientific study entitled “Babylon: The Three Chaldean Riddles” that Tatarskii discovers in a loose-leaf binder in his closet.Footnote 41 The quoted passage is about the ritualistic use of mukhomor in worship practices in the cult of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. The pseudo-scientific study serves as a model according to which the novel’s plot itself develops. By extension, the centrality of mukhomor in the study suggests the centrality of mukhomor in Generation P itself.
Because of its scientific nature, the passage describes thoroughly the properties and effects induced by the consumption of two types of mukhomor, both of which Tatarskii ends up consuming later in the narrative. The first type that the study mentions is the “red mukhomor” (krasnyi mukhomor), while the second is the “brown mukhomor” (korichnevyi mukhomor). The study emphasizes the difference in the effects that the two mushrooms induce. The red mukhomor provides the consumer with knowledge of the past, whereas the brown opens up the possibility for an insight into the future: “The red fly-agaric connects the Chaldean with the past; it provides access to the wisdom and strength of the age of the red sky. The brown fly-agaric (“brown” and “yellow” were designated by the same word in Accadian), on the other hand, provides a link with the future and a means of taking possession of all its inexhaustible energy.”Footnote 42 The pseudo-scientific study suggests that the consumption of red mukhomor is a means for regression into ancient eras whose wisdom has long been lost. The consumption of brown mukhomor, by contrast, is a means for divination. It facilitates the acquisition of knowledge about the future. The empowerment that the consumers receive in both cases is grounded in the knowledge that they supposedly acquire through the rationally inexplicable (and hence mystical) experience of revelation.
Not only does the study present mukhomor as the agent for revelation, but it also argues for its literally entheogenic effect. As the following quote from the study demonstrates, the consumption of mukhomor in the context of Ishtar’s cult creates the conditions for theosis—the transformative process by which a person unites with God, the goddess Ishtar in this case:
According to the tradition of the Chaldean riddles, any inhabitant of Babylon could become the goddess’s husband. In order to do this he had to drink a special beverage and ascend her ziggurat. It is not clear whether by this was intended the ceremonial ascent of a real structure in Babylon or a hallucinatory experience. The second assumption is supported by the fact that the potion was prepared according to a rather exotic recipe: it included “the urine of a red ass” (possibly the cinnabar traditional in ancient alchemy) and “heavenly mushrooms” (evidently fly-agaric, cf. “The Mirror and the Mask”).Footnote 43
The study proposes that the consumption of the mukhomor-containing potion creates the conditions for ascending Ishtar’s ziggurat. The ziggurat’s successful ascent is a precondition for the consumer’s unification with the goddess through marital bond. The study does not clarify how exactly one can become Ishtar’s husband and thus acquire god-like status. Yet it emphasizes how essential the consumption of mukhomor is in this process of theosis. It also addresses the uncertainty around whether the ascent of Ishtar’s ziggurat is real or a hallucination. It thus introduces the possibility that theosis is itself a hallucinatory experience rather than an actual deification of the mukhomor’s consumer.
The study’s suggestion of mukhomor’s role in revelation and theosis is central to the novel. The first time Tatarskii consumes mukhomor takes place shortly after he reads the pseudo-scientific study. Specifically, he encounters his friend Gireev by accident, who without Tatarskii’s knowledge is under the influence of mukhomor. “Calm and in control” and “inspir[ing] confidence,” Gireev invites Tatarskii to his house and offers him red mukhomor tea.Footnote 44 As the effects of the tea begin, Tatarskii experiences pleasant physical sensations, such as relaxation and waves of “pleasant quivering” across his body.Footnote 45 He also experiences pleasant emotions, such as gratitude towards Gireev.Footnote 46 More importantly, Tatarskii’s consumption of red mukhomor leads him to insights into perennial and existential questions. Specifically, listening to Gireev’s musings on the nature of being and death, Tatarskii notices that “his thoughts had acquired such freedom and power that he could no longer control them.”Footnote 47 By extension, he reaches an insight into the nature of being and death almost instantaneously through a vision that pops up in his mind: a sphere from whose center threads emerge and are extended towards its periphery.Footnote 48 With the sphere representing the mind and the threads representing the five senses, this vision is for Tatarskii the key for solving the mystery of death, a mystery “that had tormented humanity for the last several thousand years.”Footnote 49 The intellectual acuity and supposedly clear solution that Tatarskii believes to have formulated to this mystery suggest a link between the consumption of red mukhomor and access to the wisdom and strength of the past that the pseudo-scientific study establishes earlier in the narrative.
Yet the revelatory nature of Tatarskii’s visions is undermined by the ambiguity that the novel introduces: it implies, and at times explicitly demonstrates, that the visions Tatarskii experiences under the influence of red mukhomor are, in fact, hallucinations. This ambiguity is introduced through what is presented as Tatarskii’s excessive or unorthodox use of the mushroom. While still under the influence of the red mukhomor tea, Tatarskii and Gireev decide to go for a walk in the forest. There, Tatarskii eats several raw brown mukhomor on top of the tea that he had already drunk.Footnote 50 Instead of the pleasant effects and insights that Tatarskii claims to have reached after consuming red mukhomor, here he experiences uncanny symptoms, which are alluded to earlier in the narrative when Gireev reassures Tatarskii that there is nothing to be scared of regarding the consumption of mukhomor, provided that the mukhomor is red and not brown.Footnote 51 The brown mukhomor is thus something to be afraid of.
Indeed, Tatarskii’s symptoms after consuming brown mukhomor are significantly different from the effects of red mukhomor. Unlike the pleasant feelings and sensations that Tatarskii experiences earlier, he now develops symptoms which horrify not only Gireev but also the people who pass by Tatarskii.Footnote 52 For example, Tatarskii’s speech becomes fragmentary and ultimately completely incomprehensible.Footnote 53 He also becomes incredibly fast in his movements.Footnote 54 He begins experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations, mistaking the branch of a tree for Gireev and a post with a sign nailed to it for his former employer Hussein.Footnote 55 While experiencing these symptoms Tatarskii continues to be surprised by what he perceives as the intellectual acuity that mukhomor consumption had induced on him. He is struck by thoughts that he considers to be insights into the ancient past. For example, he is convinced by sudden understanding of the so-called confusion of tongues in the mythical Tower of Babel, which, in Tatarskii’s interpretation, resulted from the peoples’ consumption of mukhomor tea. Furthermore, he is convinced that the ingestion of mukhomor has helped him see the unfinished building at the abandoned construction site that he ends up entering for what he thinks it really is: the ten-thousand-year-old ziggurat of the goddess Ishtar.Footnote 56 In Tatarskii’s altered perception the building’s fire-ladder leading upwards to the tower is actually leading to Ishtar herself.Footnote 57 But by the time he begins ascending the ladder, the effects of the mukhomor wear off.
The symptoms that Tatarskii experiences are in line with current understandings of Amanita pantherina ingestion compared to Amanita muscaria. The novel shows awareness of the scientific name of brown mukhomor. After consuming LSD, Tatarskii hallucinates a creature resembling a dog with wings called Sirruf, who warns Tatarskii of the consequences of brown mukhomor ingestion, alerting him that “when … you dine on panther fly-agarics, you’re stepping way out of line—and you’re taking a grave risk.”Footnote 58 The risk, Sirruf continues, lies in the ability to perceive entities that the human mind cannot under normal circumstances. According to Sirruf, the consumers who know the risks of consuming mukhomor but consume it nonetheless negate their human nature: “By this act you declare that being human is not enough for you and you want to become someone else. But in the first place, in order to cease being human, you have to die. Do you want to die?”Footnote 59 The potential of becoming something other than human reinforces the link between the mushroom and theosis that the pseudo-scientific study mentions at the novel’s beginning. Put differently, mukhomor is presented as the agent that enables the consumers to surpass their human nature and thus become omnipotent. Paradoxically, this transformation first necessitates the consumer’s death.
Although Tatarskii’s answer to Sirruf’s question is earnestly negative in that instance—no, he does not want to die—his insistence on consuming mukhomor for a second time, knowing the risks, suggests his willingness to sacrifice his life for the sake of absolute power. Tatarskii’s mukhomor consumption for the second time marks the death of the Soviet person that Tatarskii and his generation represent. Simultaneously, it marks the rebirth of a new type of person—a sort of a Nietzschean Übermensch—which puts in motion the actualization of New Russia out of the chaos induced by the Soviet Union’s total destruction.
The novel’s antepenultimate chapter shows Tatarskii visiting Gireev for one last time to ask him for a dose of mukhomor. Gireev provides him with mukhomor and a bottle of vodka. The latter is supposed to alleviate the symptoms induced by the mushroom’s consumption.Footnote 60 This combination recalls the potion that the pseudo-scientific study mentions at the beginning of the novel: a potion that can possibly cause hallucinations. The blurry line between reality and hallucination that the study addresses is characteristic of Tataraskii’s own experience. He eats the mushroom, drinks the vodka, and sets off for the tower of the unfinished building at the construction site. While walking towards the building he again experiences the same symptoms he had previously. He reaches the construction site, ascends the tower, and finds himself in a chamber with cigarette butts and newspaper fragments on the floor. He finishes the vodka, looks at a fragment advertising a television program called “Golden Room,” and falls asleep. In the penultimate chapter, Tatarskii finds himself inside the eponymous television program, which turns out to be the space of Ishtar’s worship. It remains unclear whether Tatarskii is dreaming, hallucinating, or is indeed physically present at the television studio. Thus, the truth that is supposedly revealed to him and his theosis might as well be a hallucination or a dream.
The truth revealed to Tatarskii in “Golden Room” pertains to the occultist foundation of Russia’s advertising world and, by extension, of Russian politics. Tatarskii learns that his colleagues in the advertising industry are all members of the cult of Ishtar, with Azadovskii—his boss—being Ishtar’s chosen husband. Moreover, Tatarskii is not simply going to be initiated into the cult but transformed into a “living god.”Footnote 61 During the ritual, Ishtar chooses Tatarskii as her new husband in replacement of Azadkovskii, whom Ishtar’s followers murder violently.Footnote 62 By replacing Azadovskii as the goddesses’s husband, he also replaces him as the undisputed leader of the advertising industry. As the New Russia models itself after the world represented in the advertisements that Tatarskii and his colleagues create, the leadership of the advertising industry guarantees Tatarskii total control over the politics of the newly-founded Russian Federation.
Tatarskii’s god-like nature is reinforced by the fact that he becomes omnipresent and omnipotent as Ishtar’s followers literally transform him into a 3-D model by means of digitization. By being digitally cloned, Tatarskii becomes immaterial and surpasses the limitations of matter and human flesh. He cannot experience pain, becomes immortal, and can now be—seemingly—present in multiple places at once. Indeed, Tatarskii’s digital clone features in multiple programs and advertisements aired on television.Footnote 63 The novel’s last chapter narrates how Tatarskii takes on an acting role within the advertisements that serve as models for Russia’s new reality. In one such advertisement he impersonates Charles I, alluding thus to Tatarskii’s own regency;Footnote 64 in another an evangelist who casts a psalm on the Kremlin: “There were they in great fear; for God is in the generation of the righteous.”Footnote 65 The articulation of this psalm by Tatarskii while being in the form of an evangelist suggests that he has divine power over Russia’s political power center. Aside from advertisements, Tatarskii also features in press conferences where he holds key positions of power. These press conferences suggest that it is Tatarskii who manipulates both the state’s security forces and military decisions. Thus, his transformation guarantees him total control over Russia.
The novel’s irony lies in that it presents Russia’s political landscape and social life as the projection of a hallucination of an ancient past. By acting as if this hallucination is real, Tatraskii and his colleagues produce a reality whose politics resemble the occultist mindset and the perennial values of its creators. Given that the line between revelation and hallucination is blurred, the novel ridicules the idea that Russia should reinvent itself by returning to a mythical but allegedly authentic Russian past. It does so by underpinning that the origin of this reality is no other than mukhomor.
By representing mukhomor as the origin of Russia’s new reality, Generation P recycles the grand narrative of mukhomor that was prevalent among the late-Soviet underground. The treatment of mukhomor in Generation P is reminiscent of Kurekhin’s hoax. If Kurekhin argued that the Soviet reality was essentially a hallucination generated by mukhomor consumption, then Pelevin’s novel suggests a similar idea; only it replaces the Soviet reality with Russia’s post-Soviet reality. In this sense, the representation of mukhomor reinforces the novel’s overall ironic stance towards the reinvention of Russia: while the facade of this new reality changed dramatically after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the mechanism by which this reality was coming to life had remained unaltered. This mechanism is grounded in the active dissemination and reproduction on a mass-scale of representations of reality, which have no reference in the empirical world. The more these representations are reproduced, the more the consumers act as if they are actually true. As the consumers model their behaviors and social life according to such representations, the representations gradually assume material substance becoming real.Footnote 66
Apart from alluding to the mechanism that underlies the construction of both the Soviet and post-Soviet reality, the representation of mukhomor’s effects in Generation P also parodies imperial narratives about Russia’s national identity. According to these narratives, Russia’s future lies in the return to an idealized past and in the reinstatement of Russia as the center of an eastwards-looking empire.Footnote 67 The parody of such narratives is fleshed out in the novel’s last two chapters and is achieved by pushing the recycling of the past to levels of absurdity. The chapter in which Tatarskii becomes Ishtar’s husband and a living god after consuming mukhomor suggests that New Russia is cognate with New Babylon: the center of power of a New Babylonian empire and urban center of other Mesopotamian empires of the ancient world.Footnote 68 Yet Babylon also carries the biblical connotations of the city of evil or the “cursed city.”Footnote 69 This ambiguity suggests rather ironically that the return to such a past is far from ideal. Furthermore, the rather atemporal co-existence of contemporary mass culture practices and symbols with ancient Mesopotamian occultism, as well as with perennial values pertaining to Orthodox Christianity also accentuates the ironic effect.Footnote 70
Overall, the ironic representation of New Russia as the projection of what is essentially a mukhomor-induced hallucination of a mythical past suggests that these visions of Russianness are simply not real. If anything, they are myths and stories generated by a wild imagination on the grounds of a non-existent foundation—a void.
Alcohol, Cocaine, LSD and the Nihilistic Void
Generation P juxtaposes mukhomor to a variety of drugs. As we argued in the previous section, mukhomor is an agent for the production of visions of Russianness, and of their enactment in the empirical world. In contrast, alcohol presents itself as a numbing agent. Cocaine is a stimulator of a creative—yet aggressive—force that generates formulaic products empty of meaning. LSD induces hallucinations similar to those brought on by the brown mukhomor. Yet the LSD-induced hallucinations are so strong that they end up paralyzing their consumer and inhibiting action. The novel depicts all of these drugs as revelatory of the void that underlies the consumers’ lives. The consumers end up experiencing this void negatively as meaningless and seek to escape it. But the more they try to escape it—via the consumption of more drugs—the deeper they sink into it.
In Generation P, the drug that aligns most closely to mukhomor in terms of effect is LSD. If red mukhomor shows the consumer the past and brown the future, then both temporalities fall under the remit of LSD. Much like mukhomor, Tatarskii interprets the hallucinations that he experiences under the influence of LSD as revelations. Under the influence of LSD, he reads a text detailing the myth of the ancient god Enki, which in turn elucidates the present to Tatarskii: the myth lays the groundwork for Tatarskii’s realization that television is the medium that hypnotizes its viewers and strips them of their awareness by powerfully attracting them one by one, as if the beads of a rosary.Footnote 71 Specifically, Tatarskii hallucinates a white fire, which presents itself as a force that draws towards it all those who look at it.Footnote 72 It then becomes clear to Tatarskii that this white fire is in fact a television screen.Footnote 73 This suggests that within the hallucinations that LSD induces there is a revelatory power, as it enables Tatarskii to see that it is television—and by extension the media more broadly—that strips the consumer of their awareness.
The effects of LSD are far more intense than those of mukhomor, however. The fire is so powerful that Tatarskii feels that it can consume him. Consequently, he is unable to act upon the new knowledge that has been revealed to him. Instead, he consumes vodka to alleviate the symptoms. By numbing himself he reinforces the hypnotizing effect of television consumption itself.
The combined use of LSD and alcohol underpins the numbing function that alcohol performs in the novel. Having drunk vodka to combat the effects of LSD, the hallucinations recede, but once the alcohol begins to wear off, they threaten to return: “Something like a firework display erupted at the spot where the bathroom door had been, and when the red and yellow blaze died down a little, [Tatarskii] saw a burning bush in front of him … After drinking more vodka (he had to force it down), he went back into the room and turned on the television…the blue spot on the screen expanded and transformed itself into an image.”Footnote 74 The numbing effect of alcohol is both literal and metaphorical: it nullifies the hallucinations and dislodges Tatarskii’s revelation of the true nature of television earlier in the trip. But rather than acting on this newly acquired knowledge, Tatarskii falls back into his past habit: consuming television once again. The numbing work of alcohol is complete when Tatarskii resumes his writing of slogans, producing two possible concepts for marketing Christianity. The deep irony of this demonstrates the emptiness at the center of advertising: everything can be commodified, and once more the void is revealed to the reader in the starkest of terms by thrusting the protagonist into its core. Thus, while red mukhomor is said to reveal insights into the past and urges its consumer into action, alcohol appears to have the opposite effect: through numbing the consumer it forces them even further from the supposed truth.
At times, vodka numbs the consumer to death. The first reference to alcohol, and to vodka specifically, occurs while Gireev and Tatarskii consume mukhomor. They discuss mutual friends and acquaintances. In that context, Gireev mentions rather ironically how “[o]nly one of them, Lyosha Chikunov, had distinguished himself by drinking several bottles of Finlandia vodka and then freezing to death one starry January night in the toy house on a children’s playground.”Footnote 75
The consumption of alcohol in Generation P is parallel to the consumption of cocaine: a cocktail that is frequently consumed by those working in the advertising industry. Tatarskii is no exception, consuming both alcohol and cocaine on several occasions. Each occasion activates an unprecedented creativity in Tatarskii, who proceeds to write a series of advertising slogans and texts shortly after. However, the texts that he produces are wooden in their language and vague in meaning. These texts are reminiscent of the formulaic speech of official Soviet practices.Footnote 76 For instance, Tatarskii produces work that is heavy with complex jargon. In it, he expresses the randomness and fantasy that guides the production of advertising slogans. His example is the Gold Yava cigarettes that he tries to present in terms of Russianness. Yet the national link he is trying to establish is random, as he has no concept of what Russianness actually is:
We must certainly acknowledge that the use in advertising of the idea and the symbolism of the counterstrike is a fortunate choice. It suits the mood of the broad masses of the lumpen intelligentsia, who are the primary consumers of these cigarettes. For a long time already the mass media have been agitating for some healthy national “response” in opposition to the violent domination of American pop culture and Neanderthal liberalism. The problem is to locate the basis of this response. In an internal review not intended for outsiders’ eyes, we can state that it simply doesn’t exist. The authors of this advertising concept attempt to plug this semantic breach with a pack of Gold Yava, which will undoubtedly trigger a highly positive crystallization in the potential consumer. It will take the form of the consumer unconsciously believing that every cigarette he smokes brings the planetary triumph of the Russian idea a little closer.Footnote 77
Tatarskii’s writing is characterized by formulaic phrases (such as “we must certainly acknowledge” and “broad masses of the lumpen intelligentsia”), but crucially, little in the way of substance. Indeed, when editing his work, his focus is on the presentation of the ideas rather than the ideas themselves: “After a moment’s hesitation, Tatarskii changed the first letter of ‘idea’ to a capital.” In spite of this change from a lower- to upper-case “I,” Tatarskii’s words fail to convey concretely what the Russian Idea means in Russia of the 1990s. The lack of concreteness suggests that the values and ideologies that a Russian idea would entail are non-existent. The emptiness of these words is reinforced through Tatarskii’s conversation with Azadovskii: “‘Is there anything at all that you believe in?’ he asked. ‘No,’ said Tatarskii.”Footnote 78
Consequently, a parallel can be drawn between the impact of cocaine and alcohol consumption in the text. They both prompt the consumer to propagate the void at the center of post-Soviet society; in this case by instilling nihilistic depression that facilitates the development of slogans and advertising concepts that are empty and without substance. In doing so they thrust the consumer deeper into the void. The void is apparent in almost all of Tatarskii’s actions after consuming alcohol, cocaine, or both; whether it is the depression that these drugs induce, or the emptiness of the texts and slogans that Tatarskii writes when under their influence. Through using these drugs, the consumer gains an awareness of the existential void that underlies their life and actions, yet they are unable to escape this absence of meaning. The juxtaposition of drugs like cocaine and alcohol with mukhomor suggests that the latter is capable of offering a creative way out of the void. Yet the irony lies in that by consuming mukhomor, Tatarskii becomes the architect of a New Russian identity and reality, while knowing that these cannot be anything but a hallucination erected over the void.
In our reading of Pelevin’s Generation P we have focused on representations of mukhomor—an element which has gone mostly unnoticed in the otherwise extensive scholarship on this iconic novel. We have argued that the mukhomor thematic must be viewed in relation to Pelevin’s ironic treatment of the attempts to redefine Russianess after the fall of the Soviet Union. Based on the mythology surrounding mukhomor as an authentically Russian mushroom originating in the Russian hinterland, Generation P uses the mushroom as a tool to ironize imperial narratives which envisioned Russia’s future as a return to a mythical but allegedly authentic Russian past. The novel ironizes such narratives by underpinning the hallucinatory nature of this past, thus reinforcing its unreality.
Through a series of close readings, we have demonstrated that mukhomor serves as the agent that propels the protagonist, Tatarskii, into his position as the new almighty ruler of post-Soviet Russia. Showing an awareness of the distinct properties and effects of different species of mukhomor, Generation P uses this knowledge productively to blur the line between reality and hallucination. The novel thus presents the emergence of New Russia as the result of a collective hallucination, beginning with the consumption of mukhomor by the architects of this new reality, and ending with the hypnotizing transmission of this hallucination on a mass scale through television. We contend that the instrumental role that mukhomor plays in the construction of New Russia adds a specifically Russian shade to the post-Soviet virtuality that Pelevin tackles in his novel, revealing the absurdity of basing the post-communist future on phantasmagoric visions of an allegedly authentically Russian past.
Given the centrality of the mukhomor thematic in Generation P, we have argued that the mukhomor-fueled hallucinations cannot be simply viewed as an add-on to a postmodern pastiche. Rather, these hallucinations draw on a much older and more fundamental mythology of Russianness with roots in the countercultural currents that shaped the cultural output of Russian postmodernism. Thus Generation P is in dialogue with emblematic works such as Kurekhin’s Lenin-is-a-mushroom hoax, and Peppershtein and Anufriev’s The Mythogenic Love of Casts.
In our analysis of Generation P, we highlight how the irony in representations of mukhomor is directed at the narratives that locate Russia’s future in an idealized past. But in some representations of mukhomor this irony appears more nuanced due to a seeming sincerity. The oscillation between irony and sincerity becomes palpable in moments when mukhomor proves to be uncorrupted by the forces of capitalism and, indeed, the only thing that resists commodification.
There are two instances within the novel when Tatarskii is tempted to commodify mukhomor but is unable to do so. In the first, he comes up with the idea of selling mukhomor in packets like crisps. In the second, he devises an advertising idea for mukhomor which, as any other advertisement, is aimed at high sales and profit. In both instances, Tatarskii’s thoughts are interrupted by the very ability that the consumption of mukhomor endows him with: to see things as they really are unmediated by any interpretive filters. In the first instance, Tatarskii’s renewed perception of the decorations in the room—their materiality and form—interrupts his attempt to come up with a strategy to sell mukhomor in crisps-like packets.Footnote 79 Later, and with equal abruptness, while imagining how to advertise the mushroom, Tatarskii becomes attentive to natural phenomena: the sunset. As a result, the thought that he had been entertaining up to that moment evaporates:
Tatarskii suddenly thought of a potential advertising concept for fly-agarics. It was based on the startling realization that the supreme form of self-realization for fly-agarics is an atomic explosion—something like the glowing non-material body that certain advanced mystics acquire. Human beings were simply a subsidiary form of life that the fly-agarics exploited in order to achieve their supreme goal, in the same way as human beings exploited mold for making cheese.
Tatarskii raised his eyes towards the orange rays of the sunset and the flow of his thoughts was abruptly broken off.Footnote 80
This interruption allows Tatarskii to see the world behind the veil of thought for what it really is: material surfaces, and natural phenomena, all of which simply exist in their pure form without being subject to any symbolic order whatsoever.Footnote 81 The view of the world as such, however, is not lasting as Tatarskii’s mind stream quickly takes over again and he returns to his habitual ways of navigating through the world.
Mukhomor’s resistance to commodification introduces moments of seeming sincerity, alluding to the possibility of looking at the world in its primordial essence. This mukhomor-induced view suggests that the only way a world can qualify as authentically Russian is, paradoxically, by renouncing all sorts of identities, including the Russian identity itself. As we have shown in previous sections, mukhomor is a species which has a long-standing association with Siberia in the popular imagination. As Russia’s hinterland, Siberia is often assumed to be impenetrable to foreign influences.Footnote 82 Consequently, it is often imagined as the space where the authentically Russian resides. Although Generation P does not state the Russianness of mukhomor explicitly, it hints at it by juxtaposing it to other products that are presumed to be authentically Russian, such as vodka or the works of Anton Chekhov, but susceptible to outside influence. For example, vodka, which has long been associated in the popular imagination with Russianness, is continuously framed in the novel as a neoliberal import into Russia and is discussed primarily via its foreign branding. Furthermore, Tatarskii recycles all sorts of symbols that are associated with Russianness to create advertisements for western products. For instance, he uses the figure of Chekhov for an advertisement of the clothing chain GAP.Footnote 83 Unlike vodka and Chekhov, mukhomor does not become part of the advertising business nor the market. It appears to be impenetrable to corruption by what the novel presents as the western capitalist system of values.
The Russianness of mukhomor is further evidenced by its comparison with the fate of vodka. The example of Chikunov mentioned earlier presents itself as a metaphor that cannot be made more explicit. If Chikunov, and through him vodka, is a parable of Russia’s depressing present, then Gireev, who is “calm and in control” and who “inspire[s] confidence,” shows the potential for a future that is other than the one which is permeated by the forces of capital. Thus, mukhomor is not simply the only object that resists commodification; it is the only object originating in Russia that does so. The novel thus presents mukhomor as a force uncorrupted by capitalism and finds in it a vision of Russia’s future that originates in the past and in Russia’s Far East: a future grounded in a mode of looking at the world without interpretive filters and where the very notion of identity is alien.
As with all things Pelevin, however, this seeming sincerity comes with a question mark. Scholars such as Maya Vinokour and Sofya Khagi relate the moments of sincerity that appear throughout Pelevin’s oeuvre to the ironic modes that the author tends to implement. Vinokour argues that moments which pose themselves as sincere revelations of truth in Pelevin’s works are nothing but an expression of stiob.Footnote 84 As Mark Yoffe notes, “stiob is a very complex form of humorous cultural discourse”—one whose roots in ancient carnival practices and Russian holy fools’ behavior grew into a prevalent mode of expression in the late-Soviet artistic underground.Footnote 85 Stiob, characterized by an “extreme overidentification with the object of mockery,” as Alexei Yurchak points out and a “parodic double-talk” as Yoffe adds, often expresses “the opposite of what is being stated” and confuses the “uninitiated” who cannot determine whether the speaker’s intended message was serious or not.Footnote 86 Through its unique stylistics, stiob thus renders the object of mockery absurd by “exposing its false and hypocritical nature.”Footnote 87 For Vinokour it is especially those moments, in which readers believe they have finally reached the “bottom of Pelevin’s constructs” that show what an avid practitioner of stiob Pelevin is, and highlight his “trollish sensibility.”Footnote 88 As such, the ultimate purpose of Pelevin’s seeming sincerity is to render cynicism or indifference as the only logical way of engaging with any metanarrative.Footnote 89
Khagi also interprets the moments of seeming sincerity in Pelevin’s novels as ironic. Yet for Khagi, the irony in these moments has a more affirmative undertone than the cynicism of stiob. Drawing on the long history of irony in European and Russian thought, Khagi argues that Pelevin’s works are characterized by the co-existence of multiple ironies.Footnote 90 Such multiplicity for Khagi underpins the fact that the only way to make a point in a post-truth and postmodern world “where no one means, or feels able to mean, what one says” is to “go ironic.”Footnote 91 In this way Pelevin ironizes the function of irony itself. As Khagi reminds us, “[t]he very idea of a meaning other than that stated implies the existence of a speaker and intent beyond language, and thus goes against the poststructuralist view of the text as a play of signifiers with no grounding sensibility.”Footnote 92 Thus Pelevin’s ironies are not always directed at the object of mockery, but at the author himself, who by using irony, attempts to attain liberation.
Following Khagi’s theorization of Pelevin’s ironies, we too believe that the ambiguous treatment of mukhomor in Generation P has an element of self-irony. If we accept Khagi’s claim that Tatarskii is to some extent Pelevin’s alter ego, then Tatarskii’s fleeting glimpses into the as-suchness of the world ironize the author’s own play with sincerity.Footnote 93 In playing with sincerity, the author is also, potentially, sincerely playing, as this is the only means of liberation from the reality that Tatarskii and, indeed, Pelevin inhabit.
Oliver Ledwith is an independent researcher currently based in London. He completed his undergraduate degree in Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge. In his dissertation he explored how Victor Pelevin’s work uses psychedelic drugs as a device to discuss and critique the consumer culture that had surged into Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Katerina Pavlidi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin. She holds a PhD in Slavonic Studies from the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the literature and culture of late-Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. She is currently preparing a book on body aesthetics in Vladimir Sorokin’s works and is co-editing a volume on literary representations of dis/trust in the digital world. She is also the co-convenor of the BASEES Study Group Soviet Temporalities.
Nathan Smith is a mycologist, historian, and Head of Plant and Earth Sciences at the National Museum of Wales. His research interests are focused on the links between mycology and culture and how disciplinary identity shapes practice in the taxonomic sciences. He is also a Bye-Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge.
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