Prabhupada Smaranam

Srila Prabhupada looks so lonely and all by himself as he walks towards the Red Square in Moscow in 1971. He visited during the time of political oppression, when the Soviet Union was engaged in Cold War with United States and the West. His visa allowed him only a several-day visit, staying in an old fashioned hotel. He was not allowed any speaking engagements, and even his personal copy of the Bhagavad-gita was examined at customs before they allowed him to keep it. He had one appointment, a state-supervised interview with a professor of Indology, Prof. Kotovsky. The professor was a Marxist teaching at the university. Prabhupada could not convince him of the tenets of Krishna consciousness, and he always remembered (and repeated in lectures) that the professor had said, “Swami, after death there is no life.”

Living for even a few days in Moscow was inconvenient, and Shyamasundara had to stand in long lines to get milk, and few vegetables were available. Syamasundara dressed in his devotee clothes when he went outside, and once he was stopped and was detained by some hooligans. But a young man approached him and was attracted to his dress and made some inquiries. Shyamasundara invited him to see Prabhupada in his hotel. The young man was submissive, and Prabhupada filled him with the basics of Krishna consciousness. The boy came back for a repeated visit and soaked up Prabhupada’s words like a dry sponge. Prabhupada did not formally initiate him, but after Prabhupada’s departure the young man told his friends about Krishna consciousness, and an underground movement began. The persons who became interested were very enthusiastic, but the secret police found out about their activities and began to persecute them. This story is told in the book Salted Bread, which relates how devotees were imprisoned, tortured, put into an insane asylum, and one boy lost his life in there. Despite the opposition, the movement flourished.

With Glastnost, the thawing of relations with Soviet Union in the West, the movement grew, and devotees even printed books in Russian translations and chanted on the streets. It was a long struggle, but Russia (in the demised Soviet Union) is now one of the most successful countries in the world for recruiting Krishna conscious devotees. All this came from Prabhupada’s seemingly innocuous but truly revolutionary visit for a few days. Such is the potency of the pure devotee.

(Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami)