How Hare Krishna movement survived brutal crackdown in Russia

“Soviet Russia faced three main threats — pop music, Western culture and Hare Krishna”. This was an observation by Semyon Tsvigun, the deputy chief of the KGB, the USSR’s dreaded spy agency. This was the 1980s and several followers of Iskcon were thrown into prison for chanting “Hare Krishna”. Iskcon or International Society for Krishna Consciousness was a movement founded by AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in the US and faced challenges in Soviet land, including deaths of some of the devotees. However, the Hare Krishna movement has come a long way and become a part of Russian society.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in the Russian city of Kazan on October 22 for the Brics summit, several devotees were seen chanting ‘Hare Krishna’ upon his arrival. A video of Iskcon devotees shows how the movement has been assimilated into Russian society.

This was a movement which attracted Russians in a short span of time after entering Russia. But with the changing political mood of Soviet Russia, a tougher battle awaited it.
According to the Soviet newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya, the movement attracted educated sections in Russia. From engineers to technicians, Russians had been toughened against the western influence but they “found themselves poorly prepared to cope with mantra-reciting youngsters”, reported the New York Times in 1982.
But Russians saw more in the movement than just devotion.
Another report from 1983 by the New York Times quotes a Soviet daily which found, “Krishna organisation in the Soviet Union as a deliberate American ‘diversion’ whose victims became mentally warped and whose American leader was nothing less than an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Several devotees were arrested on the grounds of being CIA agents.
Another issue that the Russians had with the movement was how it emphasised meditation and simplicity. This did not agree with Soviet Russia, which thought it diverted people from their everyday problems, reported the Soviet daily.
It was also a foreign way of showing devotion.
“The group is singled out [even now] because of its distinctly foreign customs, which stir the distrust of outsiders inherent to many Russians, said religious studies expert Sergei Filatov,” states a Moscow Times report.
“They are just too bright and noticeable,” added Filatov.
These devotees offered a life devoid of materialism.
“We are fighting against drunkenness and condemn smoking, and yoga prohibits the use of both alcohol and nicotine. We are trying to put crass materialism to shame, and yoga calls for asceticism and for renouncing the attributes of wellbeing,” read Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya, a Soviet daily published by the Communist Party’s Central Committee.
The movement, for all these reasons, had run-ins with the Russian state.
“I had my run-ins with the KGB, police, even the military,” said Karen Khachaturyan, 48, who joined the movement in 1986.
Srila Prabhupada, the Iskcon founder, wanted to visit the USSR as an “official representative” of India. He even wrote a letter discussing this with the Ministry of Culture, according to Back to Godhead, the magazine of Iskcon.
He was denied entry and wasn’t given any reason for that.
After several attempts, he managed a tourist visa, which permitted him a short stay. However, he was not allowed to deliver a lecture at Moscow University.
But even with these limitations, Prabhupada was able to leave an impression on some Russians.
The Iskcon movement made its way into Russia when Prabhupada met Anatoly Pinyayev.
Pinyayev would become Ananta-Shanti Dasa, his lonely devotee in the USSR. But this wouldn’t be for long.
Another help came in the form of Prabhupada’s conversation with Professor GG Kotovsky, then head of the Indian and South Asian Studies Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Prabhupada made an impression on Professor Kotovsky, who had their conversation published in a prominent Russian periodical in Otkrytyi Forum.
It was Ananta-Shanti who spread Prabhupada’s message to several Soviets who turned into devotees.
“Just as you can judge whether rice is properly cooked by picking out one small grain, so you can know an entire nation by observing one of its handpicked youths,” said Prabhupada after he had met Ananta-Shanti, according to the Iskcon magazine.
Iskcon would begin to rise in popularity in the 1970s.
In 1977 and 1979, the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust received an invitation from the Moscow International Book Fair.
Several Moscovites felt a liking to Prabhupada’s books, reported the New York Times.
“To draw in visitors,” the newspaper quoted one of the devotees saying,”we offered Indian sweets that other devotees and I prepared. We played Hare Krishna music. Bright-colored books with eye-catching pictures of mythical beings lined the shelves. Fairgoers were invited to fill out order blanks, and the money, anywhere from 5 to 30 rubles, had to be put down at once”, reported NYT.
Hereafter, the momentum continued.
By the 1980s, under Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev’s rule, several Iskcon devotees were packed off to prison.
A tough relationship emerged between Iskcon and the USSR.
This was a time when Iskcon devotees appeared to be a threat to the Soviet Union.
A war ensued, but it was a smaller one and fought between a handful of devotees and the Soviet state.
The devotees were being sent to prisons, labour camps and psychiatric wards. The police and politicians handed them severe mistreatment, according to a report on Hare Krishnas in the Soviet in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Digital Library Collections.
One pregnant woman was put in prison for translating the Gita into Russian, according to several Iskcon reports.
Several devotees even died.
Then began campaigns by Iskcon’s governing body and its commissioner, Kirtiraja Dasa.
He kickstarted an international campaign of spreading news and conducting demonstrations to pressure the authorities to free the devotees.
He set up the Committee to Free Soviet Hare Krishnas, and found considerable support for this at the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjav­k, at the United Nations, and with the international media.
At the November 1986 meeting in Vienna of the Commission of Security and Cooperation in Europe, the international body which looks at human rights provisions of the Helsinki accords, here again there was a call to bring attention to devotees.
An album was also started by “free the Soviet Krishnas”, a plea by Sri Prahlada Das to the Soviet government. It was released as a single.
Finally, these devotees were freed.
In 1988, the Council of Religious Affairs even registered Iskcon, according to ‘Russia: Treatment of Krishna adherents’ report of 2020 by the Immigration and Refugee board of Canada.
These devotees could pray or even chant in public spaces.
Moscow even allotted two-storey buildings to the devotees. This would become their temple. This was the first Iskcon temple in the history of Russia and the USSR.
In 1991, a request for an authentic Vedic temple was also approved.
But another tussle started after the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church called the teachings of the Bhagavad-gÄëtā the product of a “false religion.”
Other religions were called a threat to “national consciousness and cultural identity.”
In 1997, a bill passed by the Russian parliament (Duma) deemed the Russian Orthodox Church as the sole religion of the Russian Federation.
Only three religions were accepted as three traditional Russian faiths: “Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.”
By now, the Iskcon temple had become the sole place for Indian worshippers. In the 90s alone, 97 registered communities, 22 monasteries, and 250 home groups were formed, reported the Iskcon magazine.
The Iskcon temple in Russia was decimated in 2004 after the mayor of Moscow signed an order for a new Iskcon temple on the same land, reported the Moscow Times.
But the Russian Orthodox church and other religious leaders spoke up against this order.
This time around, protests were seen in Pushkin Square in the centre of Moscow. It even saw “Krishna followers are brainwashed” and “friends defend your faith”.
The office of the city executive attorney returned the order.
At this time, support came in from Iskcon devotees in Russia. Even the Vishwa Hindu Parishad campaigned to “defend Russian Hindus”.
Finally, the land was allocated to Iskcon. In 2006, around 6,000 devotees entered an incomplete temple to celebrate Janmashtami.
Despite the challenges, more and more devotees have been attracted to Iskcon Russia.
“The establishment of this temple in Russia is huge—historically, symbolically, emotionally, and spiritually. The temple will also be huge, accommodating thousands of devotees, visitors, and seekers,” said Bhakti Vijnana Goswami, an Iskcon leader in Russia.
The devotees still do not have a temple, but their work for the community and devotion to Lord Krishna continues.
The devotees have even helped victims of a disastrous flood in Krymsk in 2012 and even lost their volunteers in the first Chechen war in the 1990s, reports Moscow Times.
“It was definitely worse back in the day,” Khachaturyan told the Moscow Times in 2014.
“People see we just sing the holy names in joy, distribute books and don’t do anything negative,” he said.
A decade on, the story seems to have developed further. With India’s soft power being celebrated worldwide, there is greater acceptance. Videos of Hare Krishna bhajan in PM Modi’s presence in Russia are a glimpse of that.