Thursday, 15 October 2020

His Holiness Nitai Chaitanya Swami Maharaja left his body in the hospital today. While he was fighting COVID-19, his blood pressure drastically increased, which resulted in pulmonary edema.

His Holiness Nitai Chaitanya Goswami Maharaja is one of the first sannyasis of Russia and one of the senior-most devotees from the time of the USSR. It was in 1970 that while listening to the underground western radio station he was fortunate to hear the sounds of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra broadcasted and a few years later he became convinced in the tradition of bhakti.

In the year 2000 he received re-initiation from His Holiness Radhanath Maharaja and it was then when he was given the name Nitai Chaitanya Dasa. In 2010 he was initiated as an ISKCON sannyasi and continued to preach fearlessly just as he did in the Soviet times when he was under surveillance and a constant danger of arrest from the KGB.  It was then when he (known as Evgeniy Jarov) was initiated with the spiritual name Yagna Priya dasa. Since then he served as ISKCON temple president in Ukraine and later and to this day as a Regional Secretary of the Central Russian region. Dedicated to preaching in Central Russia that he supervied, he opened the first purpose-built temple in the area in 2012.