Devotees in Tomsk, Siberia, are currently in court fighting an attempt by the Russian government’s Federal Security Service (FSB) to prove that Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita As It Is is an extremist literature that should be banned.
It all began in May 2010, when an officer of the Tomsk FSB division approached Sergey S. Avanesov, the dean of the philosophy department at Tomsk University, and asked him for his “expert assessment” of the Bhagavad-gita As It Is.
Interestingly, Avanesov also teache
