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PASSIONATE ABOUT MUSHROOMS
The Russian and Slavic Experience

If you think you are a mushroom, jump into the basket.
RUSSIAN PROVERB

J uly wafts in with warm winds, sultry days, cool nights, and the gentle, persistent rain the Russian people refer to as mushroom rain. On the evening train back to the city, someone alert to the mood of the forest sits with a basket of mushrooms in his lap, the top covered carefully with cheesecloth to protect the precious cargo from debris, drying breezes, and, of course, prying eyes. Anyone able to get a glimpse into the basket might see the colorful mushroom caps of syroezhkas (Russula), some gruzd (milk-caps, Lactarius) and, if the hunter was lucky or skilled, perhaps an early beliy grib (white mushroom, Boletus edulis), the most prized of the Russian mushrooms. Although the hunter is fatigued from a long-day’s tramp in the forest, his eyes have a gleam of triumph, the satisfaction of a hunt long awaited, carefully executed, and successful. The mushrooms are here!

Word quickly spreads through neighborhoods, bars, workplaces, and the street. Workers of all backgrounds, education, and professions wait impatiently for the day they can throw off the shackles of the job and head to the forest with their families, boots, pails, and baskets. In smaller towns, businesses are shuttered and local officials close the municipal offices. Older couples and babushkas look to spend as many days as possible in the forest; this is a chance to earn extra income needed to supplement meager or nonexistent pensions. It is the season of za gribami—looking for mushrooms—and Russians of every stripe heed the call of razh—mushroom passion—to troop through the woods in an annual ritual of seeking, collecting, eating, and preserving the year’s fungal bounty.

Eager mushroomers, clad in layers of clothing and stout footwear to protect their bodies from branches, bugs, and weather, arise before dawn to catch a train or a bus to the forest. They’ve learned to get into the forest ahead of the crowd or else there may be little left as the hordes move through. Family members arrive at a favored area, often where they have gathered annually their whole lives and perhaps where their parents and grandparents gathered before them. Families quickly separate into smaller groups and individuals to scour pine and aspen glades efficiently for their favorite mushrooms. Children, sharp of eye and low to the ground, learn at the knees of parents and grandparents to recognize the desired mushrooms and the ones to avoid. They fill their own baskets under the watchful eye of the family expert, usually the matriarch, who holds the knowledge about which species to keep and which to discard.

There is a bumper sticker sometimes seen along the coast of California, “The worst day of surfing is still better than the best day at work.” For Slavic people, including expatriates, change the surfing to mushrooming and you’d have a good start on a regional slogan. The Slavs go mushrooming like Americans go to malls—compulsively, often, and with gusto.

A gifted Russian painter of mushrooms and passionate mushroomer, Alexander (Sasha) Viazmensky, wrote about mushroom hunting in Russia on the occasion of his first visit to the U.S. “The feeling I experience towards woods and towards mushrooms is nothing else but love. And if there is love, there is jealousy around, directed to everyone who also loves the object of your love. When mushroom hunters run into each other in the woods they silently curse at each other, although exchanging pleasantries out loud.”¹ Tempers flare, and the territorial imperative can fuel violence when these otherwise unmarked boundaries are crossed and treasured territory invaded. During the height of the season, thousands of people will flock to the forests and, by the weekend’s close, it will be as if a broom has swept all the edible species from the forest. Again according to Viazmensky, “In Russia, mushroom hunting is the favorite activity of enormous numbers of people. Many more people are mushroom picking than, for example, fishing. Children, men and women of all ages are indulging in mushroom hunting. American Mushroomers! What happy people you are because you are so few.”²

Mushrooms are deeply woven into the culture and traditions of this region of the world. Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Rumania, Belarus—all have a strong cultural and historical connection to the forest and mushrooms. These traditions inform the habits and skills that people need to seek mushrooms, but the passion runs deeper. Cabins and homes for rent in the countryside almost invariably mention mushroom hunting as a local draw, and even on Internet dating sites people include mushroom hunting as a hobby and something they seek in a potential mate.

Mushrooms are an inseparable part of the Slavic diet, and few meals are without their complement when mushrooms are available. Pickled mushrooms dominate salads and dried or brined mushrooms are used in cooking soups and a variety of other dishes. Many regional cuisines include a traditional Christmas Eve mushroom soup, and each year, dried forest mushrooms are set aside carefully so there will be enough for the holiday soup in a lean mushroom season. These traditions, like many, were carried over to America by families of emigrating Slavs. A quick Internet search yields many mentions of and recipes for Christmas Eve mushroom soup coming from Polish, Slovakian, and other Slavic heritages. A Slovak woman from Ohio named Jane included this comment with her recipe: “This was passed down from generation to generation. I don’t have a recipe for this soup, but I will try to estimate the portions.” She went on to explain some of the history of the soup in her family. “My grandmother used to use mushrooms my grandfather and dad would pick up in the woods. I believe they called them sheephead. We can’t find the mushrooms for sale and are afraid to go and look for them in the woods. We don’t know the good from the bad.”³

Her comments echo those of many second- and third-generation immigrants who work to hold onto mushroom-related traditions but have lost access to the knowledge and the confidence to collect wild mushrooms even where they are available. Removed from a regular use of mushrooms and in a new country, they seek to retain the tradition, especially during those special holidays and at family gatherings.

The importance of mushrooms in the lives of Slavic people isn’t seen only in the cuisine, however. Many ancient Slavic folk tales feature mushrooms and forest mushroom characters in the story line. In lands where traditional life was forest-based, the Taiga, that great northern belt of forest, became the setting of many folk and fairytales. Perhaps the best-known folk tales in Russia involve Baba Yaga, the ancient crone who guards the gate between this world and the underworld, between mortals and fairies. In some stories she is a benign, though frightening, force and in others she is malevolent, known to eat the unwary and to decorate her forest home with the bones of her victims.

As a child, I learned numbers and the ABCs through songs, stories, and games. I used many of the same stories with my son. In Russia, toddlers learn the names and characters of mushrooms through stories, poetry, and songs. One well-known nursery rhyme involves the mushroom king, Borovik, calling his mushroom troops into battle. The story exists in many variations, but they all serve as a way to teach children.

The Mushrooms Go to War

Borovik, mushroom white,

Colonel of the mushroom might,

Sitting under a large oak

Looking at his mushroom folk

Summoned them, ordered them

To go to war.

We can’t go, said the ink-caps,

Our foot’s too small for the steps.

We don’t have to go to war.

We can’t go, said the belianki,

We are noble white dvorianki.

We don’t have to go to war.

We can’t go, said the toadstools,

We are brigands, we are crooks.

We don’t have to go to war.

I can’t go, said the morel.

I am too old and not too well.

I don’t have to go to war.

Said the russet ryzhiki,

We are simple muzhiki.

We don’t have to go to war.

We’ll go, cried the groozd,

We are brave and willing.

We shall go to war

And make a great killing.⁴

Many Russian tales feature food and drinks that are given or exchanged and that are sometimes magical or intended for the dead. Mushrooms often are possessed with such magic, and illustrations for the fairy tales often show Baba Yaga amid the bright red fly agaric and other mushrooms. The tales often are populated with a mixture of woodland creatures and children. In one, Baba Yaga captures and intends to eat a hedgehog sitting atop a mushroom and eating another mushroom. The hedgehog convinces Baba Yaga that he can be more useful in other ways, and changes into a small boy who leads the hag to a magical sunflower.⁵ According to one Slavic researcher, “In another legend, Baba-Yaga puts the hero in touch with magic creatures (spirits), Lesovik and Borovik, who live under a mushroom and provide the hero with magical gifts which show him the way to reach his goal.”⁶ Whether depicted as benign or malevolent, Baba Yaga often appeared with mushrooms.

Mushrooms also are featured in the writings of a number of Slavic authors, both contemporary and classic. Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Nabokov all created characters who were mushroom hunters. In his memoir, Speak Memory, V. I. Nabokov reminisces about his mother’s infatuation with mushroom picking. “One of her greatest pleasures in summer was the very Russian sport of hodit’ po griby (looking for mushrooms). Fried in butter and thickened with sour cream, her delicious finds appeared regularly on the dinner table. Not that the gustatory moment mattered much. Her main delight was in the quest, and this quest had its rules.”⁷ The Russian author Sergei T. Aksakov referred to mushrooming as the “third hunt” to describe the qualities of experience as perceived by the hunter. “Although it cannot be compared with the more lively forms of hunting for the obvious reason that these are concerned with living creatures . . . here is an element of the unknown, of the accidental, there is success or failure, and all these things together arouse the hunting instinct in man and constitute its particular interest.”⁸

Indeed, as any mushroom hunter readily knows, there is a strong primitive element of the hunt to any mushroom outing. The decision of where to hunt for mushrooms is based on past experience of the quarry’s preferred habitat, knowledge of current and recent weather conditions, awareness of the patterns of other mushroom hunters, and a healthy dose of intuition, which all combine to shape the hunt and predict the outcome. In the forest, no hunters will share the locations of their spots or even divulge optimism regarding the possibility of finding any mushrooms at all. This primitive, instinctual behavior of the hunt is as true in Russia and all Slavic lands as it is in our own backyards. In fact, people become so intent on the collection that, at times, they throw caution to the wind.

In 2000, a great wet mushroom year across northern Europe, citizens in the far north Russian town of Krasnoselkup risked life and limb to gather mushrooms. The local airfield was known as the best mushroom site in this region with a very short season, and mushroom gatherers were so intent on their harvest that they placed themselves in the path of incoming air traffic, causing several aborted landings. Concerned local officials established a fine, equivalent to $1,000 (equal to three months’ average wages) for anyone caught mushrooming on airport property. One air traffic controller acknowledged that only the threat of fines was effective in ending the high-risk mushrooming practice.⁹

Though popularly referred to as the “quiet hunt,” mushrooming in Eastern Europe is often a social gathering as whole families or groups of friends head out into their favored territory. At the end of the day, or the end of the weekend for those lucky to have a dacha in the country in which to stay the night, the weary mushroom hunters head back toward the city. They troop onto trains packed with other mushroom hunters wet from dew or rain, speckled with soil, leaf, and needle from the forest, and deliriously happy if their hunt has gone well.

Once the mushrooms are transported safely back home and into the kitchen, the work of preserving the harvest begins, though it may wait until after a meal of fresh mushrooms. The mushroom most esteemed by Russians is beliy grib, the white mushroom or Boletus edulis. In years when they are plentiful, this mushroom fills the baskets and they are eaten fresh, as are the lisichki or chanterelle, Cantharellus cibarius, either boiled or boiled and fried. These and many other species also are preserved for winter use by drying or perhaps by boiling followed by marinating, pickling, or salting. Some species in the genera of Russula and Lactarius (milk-caps) are soaked in water or boiled to rid them of their acrid peppery taste before final cooking or preservation in brine. These species would make people sick without such preparation.

Because much of the mushroom harvest coincides with the farm harvest, historically mushrooming has been an activity for the very old, the very young, and women. For this reason, and perhaps others, it is common for the family mushroom expertise to rest in the capable hands of a grandmother who passes it down to a daughter or granddaughter.

There may be many historic factors combining to nurture the current nationalistic passion for mushrooming that ignites Slavic people. A recent poll in Russia estimated that 60 percent of adults go mushroom hunting each year and only 18 percent report having never collected wild mushrooms. In the neighboring Czech Republic and Slovakia, mushroom hunting is seen as a national pastime. There, up to 80 percent of the Czechs and Slovaks spend at least one day per year searching for mushrooms, according to Slavic scholar Craig Cravens. He reports that the activity began during times of famine, especially during the devastating Thirty Years War and the two world wars.¹⁰ Families foraged the fungi as an emergency food supply. Now it has become a national hobby.

For all these northern peoples, mushrooms, with their relatively high protein content and vitamins, are a good source of food. Russians began referring to them as “Lenten Meat” when the Tsarist-era Russian Orthodox Church required believers to fast more than 175 days per year.¹¹ This meant no meat or meat fats were to be consumed on fast days. (It makes the meatless Fridays of my own Catholic youth seem mild.) And the church’s prohibition against the use of meat fats during fasting may be a basis for the Slavic practice of boiling many of the mushrooms as a method of cooking.

With the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the food production and distribution system in place during Soviet times was seriously disrupted. In many areas of the former USSR, food shortages became common and food prices rose sharply as subsidies ended and the fear of famine emerged. For many people during the 1990s, this meant shortages of food, and often, a disruption in income as government workers and pensioners went unpaid. Access to wild mushrooms again became vital for many as a no-cost, basic subsistence food. Many rural Russians also used wild mushrooms as a source of income, collecting them in the forest and selling them in towns and cities.

This re-emergent reliance on mushrooms as a staple food source came at a time when some people, especially those in cities, had not collected mushrooms on a regular basis for years, and the knowledge they had as youths had begun to fade. Unfortunately, there was no diminishment in self-confidence and, as a result, during the 1990s and into the new millennium, the incidence of serious mushroom poisoning increased throughout the former USSR. Many medical providers and public health officials have attributed this increase to the lack of familiarity that many city dwellers have in distinguishing between edible and toxic species.

Many regional mushroom guides are available for Russians and other Slavs who are interested in consulting a formal resource, but unfortunately, many Slavic people don’t use them for identification even when they are easily available. They learn their mushrooms as children and rely on family and other informal teachers for assistance. More than one resource I consulted mentioned that many collectors resent the implication that they might not know enough to avoid poisonous species and will resist offers for help in confirming the edibility of their collections. Those who have a history of collecting edibles from a specific location may rely more on their past success at that location than on knowledge of the mushrooms themselves. When they get sick, people may attribute toxicity to environmental contamination, mushrooms taken from the wrong location, or edible mushrooms that somehow had mutated into poisonous ones.¹² Health officials in the southern Russian city of Voronezh have collected and tested suspect mushrooms and found that they generally contained toxins typical of known poisonous mushrooms and none were determined to have mutated. Voronezh, a city of about one million, made headlines several times over the past decade as an area with one of the highest incidences of mushroom poisonings in Russia. It is located in the part of Russia and Ukraine known as the Black Soil region, known as a fine mushrooming area. Mikhail Zubirko, MD, of the local sanitary and epidemiological department, reported on some of the people he sees sickened by mushrooms, “These are city people who do not know their mushrooms very well: 74 of the patients being treated for poisoning did not know what mushroom they had eaten.”¹³ This sense of confidence not supported by adequate knowledge is perhaps the shadow side of a strongly mycophilic culture. It is particularly problematic when city dwellers revisit their mushrooming roots without the support of the family matriarchs to go through the collection basket and discard the bad mushrooms.

Each year a large number of people are poisoned by mushrooms in Russia, Ukraine, and other Slavic countries. It is difficult to gather accurate numbers, but in 2000, a particularly good year for mushrooms and a bad year for mushroom poisonings, there were an estimated 200 deaths attributed to mushroom poisoning in Russia and Ukraine alone. (In contrast, an average of one or two people are killed by poisonous mushrooms each year in the United States.) In both regions, deaths are overwhelmingly attributed to consumption of Amanita phalloides (see Chapter 8 for more information). Health authorities in Russia became so alarmed about the sharp rise in serious poisonings that, in the middle of the 2000 season, they closed off broad areas of the country to mushroom picking and had police patrolling the local markets and forest edges to encourage caution or enforce the ban on sales of wild mushrooms. Several large regional hospitals, including the one in Voronezh, reported being overwhelmed with severe poisonings and having to transfer mild cases to other hospitals for treatment. Apparently, even medical personnel are not immune from mushroom poisoning. Two doctors from the regional hospital in Voronezh were hospitalized for mushroom poisoning in 2005, sickened by mushrooms they collected and ate on their days off.¹⁴

In Ukraine, the regional medical center in Kiev reports dealing with so many mushroom poisonings during the short season that it has prompted a team of doctors to look upon their work with mushroom poisoning victims in terms of disaster response.¹⁵ The director of the medical center reported that their Ukrainian Center of Emergency and Disaster Medicine might have as many as twenty victims of amatoxin poisoning simultaneously and treat up to 1,000 mushroom-poisoned patients per year. They cared for 196 victims of Amanita phalloides poisoning in 2000 alone!

In mainstream America and other mycophobic cultures, the twin myths— that most wild mushrooms are poisonous and if you eat one you will likely die—keep most people from experimenting with eating mushrooms unless they are absolutely certain of the identity and safety. These myths and the assumption of the generally malign nature of mushrooms act as a barrier to people who might otherwise look to them as a potential food source. These same myths also act as a protective shield, however, ensuring that few people will foolishly experiment with eating wild mushrooms and end up poisoned. In Slavic culture, the assumption is that mushrooms are good and the gods placed them on earth for people to collect, eat, and enjoy. Children learn 100 common mushrooms in school as adolescents. Collecting and eating mushrooms is considered normal and most of the time is safely done, otherwise the number of people poisoned would be far higher. But for the small percentage of Slavic citizens who possess inadequate knowledge to distinguish edible from toxic species and do not realize it, these assumptions combine to place them at high risk for being seriously sickened. This is the dark side of a region passionate about mushrooms. I also have little doubt that, as the number of Americans collecting and eating wild mushrooms increases, there will be a corresponding increase in the incidence of poisoning here.

The light side of Slavic mushrooming outshines the dark by far. The new mushroomer in Eastern Europe will find himself surrounded by a broad encouraging support system. The number of role models out collecting on a regular basis and the extensive history of mushrooming all combine to ease the path to learning and building confidence. Now if our novice mushroomer can get anyone to show him where they find beliy gribs, he will be all set.