Kirtiraj Das ACBSP: Hare Krishna.
I have been looking for this photo for years. Haripuja just found it.
This photo was taken on August 20, 1991, in Moscow, on the edge of Red Square and across from the Central Post and Telegraph Office. It was almost 35 years ago to the day.
Haripuja and I had traveled from Sweden to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) for the first Jagannatha Rathayatra in Leningrad, the cultural capital of the then Soviet Union. After a very ecstatic festival, we took a very comfortable overnight train to Moscow.
Three Moscow devotees met us when the train arrived the next morning. After folded hands and pranams, the devotees asked us very excitedly if we had heard the news.
I told them that we had not heard the news and that even if we had heard it, we wouldn’t have understood what was being said, because it would have been in Russian.
They proceeded to tell us that there had been a coup against the Soviet government, that Mr. Gorbachev had been removed as President of the USSR, and that the country was under military control.
Of course, being the householders that we are, our first concern was whether we would see our two kids again, who had stayed behind in Sweden. The Moscow devotees couldn’t assure us of anything.
When we got to the main Moscow Temple, we met with Niranjana Maharaja, who was already there; Krishna Kaumara Dasa, the President of our Moscow Society for Krishna Consciousness, which had recently been registered by the Soviet government; and Vaidyanatha Dasa, who later was initiated as a sannyasi with the name Bhakti Vijnana Maharaja.
We proceeded to sit in a room and listen on a transistor radio to the report on the coup being broadcast by the BBC in London.
One of the things mentioned in that broadcast was that there were unconfirmed reports of tanks in the streets of Moscow, positioned around the Kremlin, the seat of the Soviet government.
When we heard that statement, we somewhat jokingly said that we should go and confirm those reports.
Niranjana Maharaja, Krishna Kaumara, Vaidyanatha, Haripuja, and I grabbed a taxi and proceeded towards Red Square.
The main avenue leading into Red Square, Tverskaya Street, is about ten lanes wide, and it was closed to general traffic. Every few blocks, there was a police checkpoint stopping any vehicles that may have gotten onto the street.
We were stopped by four or five police checkpoints, and we told the police at each one that we had to get to our hotel, the National Hotel, on the edge of Red Square.
It wasn’t really our hotel, but it was the hotel where Srila Prabhupada had stayed during his historic visit to Moscow twenty years earlier.
Back to the Photo
When we were finally stopped at the checkpoint in front of the National Hotel, we exited the taxi.
We looked down a side street off Tverskaya and saw a group of tanks lined up, ready for action.
We walked over to the tanks and joined a group of Muscovites who were crowding around them, yelling at the soldiers. Some old ladies were even beating the tanks with their umbrellas!
I proceeded to lean on the tank as if I were holding it back, and the photo was taken.
There’s so much more to tell about this monumental event that changed the Soviet Union and the world. But I’ll save that for another time—maybe in a book.
Hare Krishna.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
Source: https://www.dandavats.com/?p=118987
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