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April 10, 2026
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"Moscow scholars continue to ignore Novgorod’s creation of a truly effective Russian democratic state preferring instead to draw their models of such a system from antiquity or Western Europe, thus failing to make clear that Russians can build a democracy because they already have, Viktor Sbitnev says. By their silence, they implicitly accept the Muscovite view that the only kind of Russian state possible is a highly centralized and authoritarian one, despite the fact that in Novgorod the Great for more than 500 years there was more liberalism “than in Ancient Greece and the Venetian Republic taken together,” the Literaturnaya Rossiya commentator continues."
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.