A Generation on Mushrooms: Mukhomor and Visions of Russianness in Victor Pelevin’s Generation P
Slavic Review January 1, 2025 Oliver Ledwith, Katerina Pavlidi, Nathan Smith
Victor Pelevin's novel Generation P captures the zeitgeist of 1990s Russia and a generation searching for a new identity after the Soviet collapse. This analysis focuses on the overlooked role of the entheogenic fungus mukhomor. The novel uses mukhomor-induced hallucinations to ironize imperial narratives that sought to restore a mythical, authentic Russian past. It suggests that an authentically Russian future requires abandoning the very notion of Russianness, grounded in the genetic origin of mukhomor in the Russian hinterland, which enables a vision of the world devoid of symbolic order and all identities.