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April 10, 2026
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"There is nothing better than Nevsky Prospect, at least in St. Petersburg; for him he is everything. Why this street does not shine – the beauty of our capital! I know that none of its pale and bureaucratic residents will exchange for all the benefits of Nevsky Prospect. Not only someone who is twenty-five years old, a wonderful mustache and an amazingly tailored frock coat, but even someone with white hair popping out on their chin and a head as smooth as a silver dish is delighted with Nevsky Prospect. And ladies! Oh, ladies are even more pleased with Nevsky Prospect. And who doesn't like it? As soon as you climb onto Nevsky Prospekt, it already smells of one party. At least he had some necessary, necessary business, but, having climbed on it, surely, you will forget about any business. Here is the only place where people are shown unnecessarily, where their need and mercantile interest, which embraces the whole of Petersburg, has not driven them."
"At about six in the evening we arrived safely in St. Petersburg, which has changed so much since my departure from there that I did not recognize it at all. From the very beginning we entered a long and wide alley, (a small part of the road not far from the Admiralty), and justly called the avenue, because its end is almost invisible. It was laid only in a few years and exclusively by the hands of captured Swedes. Despite the fact that the trees planted on both sides of it in three or four rows are still small, it is unusually beautiful in its enormous length and the purity in which it is kept (captured Swedes must clean it every Saturday), and it makes a wonderful appearance , which I have not seen anywhere else. On the Admiralty, a beautiful and huge building at the end of this road, there is a beautiful and rather tall spitz, which goes directly opposite the avenue."
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.