The Arctic and Its Future
April 2009
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Russia--Cultivating the Common Ground of Peace
Daisaku Ikeda and Premier Kosygin at their second meeting, Moscow, May 1975
[© Seikyo Shimbun]
SGI President Daisaku Ikeda first visited the Soviet Union in September 1974.
Japan and Russia fought bitter battles before and during World War II. In the postwar period, well into the 1970s, relations between the two countries remained strained by the failure to conclude a peace treaty and by Japan's close relationship with the United States.
Ikeda's decision to visit the Soviet Union was met with considerable criticism in Japan. He was asked what business a religious leader had visiting a country that renounced religion. His reply was, "I'm going because there are people there." He also said that whatever a nation's ideology, the people of that country--like people everywhere--desire to live in peace.
By visiting the Soviet Union, Ikeda sought to cultivate mutual understanding through the promotion of educational and cultural exchange. He acted in the belief that relations between individual human beings are the foundation of relations between countries and that the construction of goodwill depends on bonds of trust and friendship.
When Ikeda met with Soviet Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin (1904-80), the Premier asked the Buddhist leader to explain his basic ideology and he replied, "I believe in peace, culture and education--the underlying basis of which is humanism."
Ikeda had just visited Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad, present-day St. Petersburg, where around half a million of the city's inhabitants who died during the 900-day Siege of Leningrad (1941-44) are buried. He described to Kosygin how affected he had been by the experience and Kosygin shared that he had been in Leningrad during the siege.
Four months before his visit to the Soviet Union, Ikeda had visited China. This was at a time when relations between China and the U.S.S.R. were very highly strained. There was an atmosphere of mutual hostility and suspicion, with a buildup of military forces along the Soviet-Chinese border; even nuclear war seemed a possibility. Ikeda had been struck by the sight of schoolchildren in China digging bomb shelters in their school grounds against the possibility of a Soviet attack.
Ikeda shared with the Soviet Premier the concerns he had seen expressed in China regarding the Russians' intentions. And then he asked bluntly: "Does the Soviet Union intend to attack China?" The Premier responded that the Soviet Union had no intention of attacking or isolating China. When Ikeda then asked if he could convey this message to the Chinese leadership, Kosygin agreed. On a subsequent visit to China, Ikeda delivered this message to the country's leaders, contributing to the easing of tensions between the two countries.
Culture and Education
In 1975, on his second visit to the Soviet Union, Ikeda delivered a lecture at Moscow State University entitled "A New Road to East-West Cultural Exchange" on the need to build a spiritual "Silk Road" of cultural exchange linking East and West. On the same occasion, Moscow State University presented him with an honorary doctorate--the first such award conferred on Ikeda. An exchange agreement was signed between Moscow State University and Soka University, which Ikeda had founded in 1971; since that time, over 500 students have participated in the two-way exchange.
An exhibition of Russian masterpieces at the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, October 2003
[© Seikyo Shimbun]
When Ikeda visited the U.S.S.R. in 1981, an exhibition of Japanese children's dolls was held to promote cultural exchange, and during his fourth visit, in 1987, the SGI exhibition "Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World" was shown in Moscow. Meanwhile, a number of events were held in Japan introducing the culture of the Soviet Union to Japanese audiences, including exhibitions mounted by the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum and a visit of the All-State Folk Ensemble of the U.S.S.R., and in 1982, Natalia Sats, the Moscow State Children's Musical Theater's founder and president, brought her theater for children to Japan for the first time.
More recently, there has been close collaboration between the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, founded by Ikeda, and the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Oriental Studies on the preservation, exhibition and reproduction for scholarly purposes of rare ancient Buddhist manuscripts.
Discussing war and peace with a WW II veteran, Moscow, 1975
[© Seikyo Shimbun]
In 1990, Ikeda met with then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, and again when Mr. Gorbachev visited Japan the following spring. The two have developed a strong friendship, meeting on numerous occasions, and publishing a dialogue entitled Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century.
In 1994, Ikeda delivered his second lecture at Moscow State University, on "The Human Being: A Magnificent Cosmos." In this lecture he stated: "I am one who believes that absolute and indestructible happiness in life lies only in working selflessly for others, while expanding one's inner realm from the 'lesser self' caught up in the snares of egotism to the 'greater self' fused with universal life."
Relations with Moscow State University have developed from Ikeda's friendship with the late Rector Rem V. Khokhlov and his successors Anatoli A. Logunov and Victor A. Sadovnichy. Two volumes of dialogues with Rector Logunov and one volume with Rector Sadovnichy have been published in Russian and Japanese.
The SGI President also developed friendships with author Mikhail Sholokhov and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman cosmonaut. He has published dialogues with Albert Likhanov, president of the International Association of Children's Foundations, and cosmonaut Alexander Serebrov.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Daisaku Ikeda in Tokyo, March 2003
[© Seikyo Shimbun]
In February 2008, the Russian Federation presented Ikeda with the Order of Friendship, in recognition of his promotion of diverse exchanges. In an indication of the scope of the friendship he has developed, he was recommended for this award jointly by six people: Mikhail Gorbachev; Dr. Sadovnichy; Zinaida Dragunkina, a member of the Federation Council's upper house; the noted Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov; Sergey Baburinvice, speaker of the lower house; and Alexander Serebrov.
Much of Ikeda's deep interest in Russia and her people grew out of his youthful reading of the great Russian literary masters. Tolstoy, in particular, has been an important inspiration for Ikeda. Vladimir Illich Tolstoy, great-great-grandson of Leo Tolstoy and director of the Leo Tolstoy Museum Estate in Yasnaya Polyana, the birthplace of Tolstoy, traveled to Japan in December 2008, to present the SGI leader with an award which honors individuals who have contributed to the perpetuation of Tolstoy's spirit.
Ikeda's efforts to build friendships with the people of Russia now span more than three decades. As he stated in August 1994, "People criticized me, asking why a person of religion would want to visit a communist country. But I was determined to open that road. Together, we have transformed suspicion into trust, and fear into friendship. I wanted to transform a fixation with the past into a commitment to the future."
With thanks to Hajime Mizushima, Seikyo Shimbun reporter.
The Moscow State Children's Music Theater performs in Tokyo, November 1990
[© Seikyo Shimbun]
