The Grand Narrative of the Mukhomor
The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review June 30, 2020 Dennis Ioffe 4 citations
Mushrooms, especially the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), played a complex mythopoetic role in Moscow conceptualist art. Drawing on historical scholarship by R.G. Wasson, V.N. Toporov, and T.J. Elizarenkova, the article explores how mushroom-induced beliefs influenced this artistic movement. It focuses on Pavel Peppershtein and Sergey Anufriev's novel The Mythogenic Love of the Castes, in which the protagonist, Communist Party Organizer Dunaev, eats hallucinogenic mushrooms after being wounded in World War II and transforms into a wizard fighting a "parallel war" between Russian fairy-tale heroes and Western children's characters. The article contextualizes these entheogenic episodes within a broader constructed visionary reality, emphasizing the cultural significance of psilocybin fungi and fly agaric.