Romanian Breakthrough

Romanians and Czechs dance to the holy names of Kṛṣṅa.

Romanian Vignettes

by Suhotra Swami

December 1989: Jārna, Sweden

SPELLBOUND, I watch the satellite TV news with Kīrtirāja Prabhu, ISKCON’s Governing Body representative for Eastern Europe. We’re sitting in the apartment of Vedavyāsa Dāsa, a Russian emigre who’d done time in a Soviet psychiatric prison because of his faith in Kṛṣṅa, before the days of glasnost and perestroika.

Scenes from a new and frightening phase in the changes sweeping Communist Romania flicker on the screen: Running gun battles in the streets of Romania’s cities as the dreaded Securitate (secret police) try to thwart army-supported, pro-democracy forces from taking over the government. A grisly display of exhumed victims of the Red terror in Timisoara, their wrists bound with barbed wire. A nightmarish look into the maze of tunnels under central Bucharest where armed thugs loyal to the toppled regime make a last stand. The sightlessly staring face of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, his body riddled with the bullets of an exultant firing squad.

We learn that after more than two decades of repression many Romanians find it hard to believe that, in the words of one exiled writer, “Dracula is finally dead.”

I’d visited Romania ten years before to see what opportunity there was for spreading Kṛṣṅa consciousness. I succeeded only in selling some books to an Indian guest instructor at the University of Bucharest who’d written a letter asking for someone from ISKCON to visit him.

Some of his students came to his apartment while I was there, but he quietly advised me not to reveal too much about myself in their presence and not to let our discussions move beyond the subject of “Indian culture.” I found these young people goodhearted and surprisingly interested in religious matters. But a palpable paranoia hung in the air over the Romania of that time.

In 1976 my German Godbrother Avināśa Candra Prabhu had been thrown out of the country for making the very first attempt to spread Kṛṣṅa consciousness there.

Now, as we watch joyous throngs in the streets of Bucharest celebrating the first Christmas without Ceausescu that many Romanians have ever seen, Kīrtirāja turns to me with a broad smile and says, “Looks like Kṛṣṅa just gave you another shot at Romania!”

Suhotra Swami, an American disciple of Śrīla Prabhupāda, has been traveling and spreading Kṛṣṅa consciousness in Europe since the mid-seventies. He is currently serving in the Scandinavian countries.

Kṛṣṅa Culture on Tour

by Nitya Tṛptā Devī Dāsī

March /April, 1990

TWO OR THREE times a year at the Hare Kṛṣṅa farm in the Bavarian Forest of Germany, the four devotees who make up the Gaurāṅga Bhajana Band* get ready for a tour. [*The Gaurāṅga Bhajana Band will tour Poland in May for thirteen days.]

Till last year, they’d mainly toured Germany. But lately they’ve been moving through Eastern Europe.

On the farm, forty kilometers from Czechoslovakia, fifty from Austria, the devotees spend a few days in practice, and then they’re ready. They don’t pretend to be professional musicians; they’re devotees giving philosophical and spiritual ideas through culture.

It works.

Some fifteen or twenty devotees travel on the tour, running the sound system, cooking, chanting, dancing, and distributing books.

I recently traveled with the band for seventeen days in Romania and Czechoslovakia.

The program was simple: devotional songs with traditional instruments, then a multi-projector slide show, a philosophical talk, and congregational chanting of the Hare Kṛṣṅa mantra.

In Cluj, Romania, some young women who had been sitting next to the projection booth deluged me with questions during the intermission. What’s tilaka? What about reincarnation? What about everything.

When the program was over, they were nearly in tears at the thought of leaving.

In Iasi, a so-called model city in eastern Romania, near the Soviet border, the young Romanian who had organized our tour told us that people were shocked at our openness in speaking publicly on God consciousness. Only one or two months before, this would have been a punishable offense.

For each of our two programs in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, over three thousand people showed up. During the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṅa at the end, many literally jumped out of their seats. They flooded the stage with flowers—a tradition for a performance appreciated. The holy name of Kṛṣṅa had melted their hearts.

In Czechoslovakia, people had a different mood. Many took notes during the lecture. Others followed the tour from city to city.

And it was in Czechoslovakia that we discovered the bliss of asking the audience to move away the chairs and learn the “swami step”—the way Srīla Prabhupāda taught us to dance.

Nitya Tṛptā Devī Dāsī joined the Hare Kṛṣṅa movement in 1975 in Los Angeles. For ten years she worked in Photoloka, the photography department of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. Then she migrated to Italy, where she and her husband set up Kṛṣṅa Vision, a creative source for Kṛṣṅa conscious multi-projector slide shows.