W
hen Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja went to America, the Cold War between communism and capitalism was going on intensively. The communist countries were gaining influence after winning the war in Vietnam and nobody in the world could imagine that there could be a change in the situation. Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja systematically sent His followers to penetrate the so-called “iron curtain” behind communism, where an atheistic philosophy and form of government was flourishing. Swami Maharaja had been strategizing to bring God into godless Soviet Russia. Finally, after several attempts Swami Maharaja was officially invited to Moscow by Professor G. G. Kotovsky, head of the Indian and South Asian Studies Department of the U.S.S.R. Nevertheless, the five days Swami Maharaja spent on Russian soil provided him with ample opportunity to establish the movement that would eventually play out in Soviet Russia. His initial strategy emerged when he met a young Russian seeker, Anatoly Pinyayev, who would soon become Ananta Shanti Das. Ananta Shanti was Swami Maharaja’s courageous and lone student in the Soviet Union and would later be responsible for opening many centers all over Russia.
When Eka Das was arrested for his preaching activities and put in solitary confinement, he chanted 64 rounds of Japa and refused to take their food. After some months, the communist regime resolved that they could not handle this monk and that it was better to throw him out, so overnight they deported him to West Germany. Books were smuggled into communist countries, and the Swedish BBT started publishing the books translated into Czech by Paraghati and Turiya and into Russian and Hungarian by Srila Bhakti Abhay Narayan Maharaja.
Preachers like Dhira Krishna Das and Sripad Devamrita Swami went to visit the small groups of devotees that were starting to develop due to the extensive readings of Swami Maharaja´s books. The one benefit of communism was that life was very simple and anyone would read any book they could get their hands on. Every book that was distributed was read a minimum of one thousand times as it passed from hand to hand, in comparison to today, where people get a thousand books and maybe read one.
At the same time, Russian devotees were being severely persecuted. Several devotees died in prison, clinging tightly to their faith while being tortured in various ways. Kirtiraja Das, who was the regional secretary for the Soviet Union, began an international campaign of news releases and demonstrations to pressure Soviet authorities to release the imprisoned devotees and stop the persecution of the members of the Hare Krishna movement. The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mijail Gorbachev was very instrumental in freeing all of the Russian devotees from the persecution and sufferings of imprisonment. He played a very important role by allowing the Russian system to change. Even though capitalism has not given much relief to the ecological state of the world, the relative freedom of a lot of people has definitely been instrumental in allowing people to find out about Lord Krishna. Perhaps it was the prayers of all the Vaishnavas that caused the iron curtain to fall. When the Berlin Wall finally fell, devotees from East Germany and West Germany were finally allowed to meet, and together joined the Sankirtan movement.
Small farm communities also started developing in a much more hidden form; Nandafalva in Hungary became the first Krishna Conscious farm community behind the Iron Curtain. According to one anecdote, pioneering devotees like Krishnananda Das and Srila Janardana Maharaja had to face the local police.
Srila Bhakti Abhay Narayan Maharaja, along with Srila Bhakti Aloka Paramadvaiti Maharaja, prepared the first preaching tour to Hungary. They smuggled a car full of books and conducted the first preaching tour with lectures, public kirtans and book distribution in different cities throughout Hungary.
Yugoslavia was a gateway, because even though the country was communist, its border policies were not as strict as those of other countries. In East Germany, preachers could only go in with a 24th hours visa and had to come back the same day; devotees went in at least a hundred times or more. The Library Party also visited communist countries and distributed Swami Maharaja´s books in many universities by gaining recommendations of professors who could understand the importance of His message.
K. Raghunath, India’s ambassador to Russia also made an impact by giving a speech that was aired nationally, declaring that the Krishna Conscious movement deserved glorification for strengthening the friendly bond between Russia and India. The campaign to build the temple known as the “Temple of the Heart” received much support from patrons around the world after this speech. Nothing could stop the devotees now. They had important political leaders on their side, and the public had become fully aware of the situation. Any attempt to stop the project would become prominent in the news. The Krishna movement in Russia was now on solid ground.
The first disciple of Srila Swami Maharaja in East Germany was called Eka Das (the one and only servant of Eka, the Supreme).