Yoga in Russia

Yoga has been practised in Russia since the actor Constantin Stanislavski made extensive use of Hatha Yoga in his system for training actors in the 1910s.

A beginning was made when Catherine the Great had a translation of the Bhagavad Gita published in 1788. Yoga was banned in the Soviet Union, but Russians living abroad developed systems of yoga, including the Agni Yoga of Nicholas Roerich and Helena Roerich in the 1920s. Later, Indra Devi, who left Russia during the Russian Revolution, studied under the pioneer of modern yoga Tirumalai Krishnamacharya in India, and popularised it in America; she visited the Soviet Union in 1960. Victor Skumin, influenced by Agni Yoga, in 1968 proposed the "culture of health", encompassing physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

Yoga grew rapidly in Russia in the 1990s, after glasnost and the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. B. K. S. Iyengar visited Russia and helped to create a network of 50 yoga studios. Since then, yoga has diversified, with many forms of yoga available in studios across the country. From the 2010s, the International Day of Yoga has been celebrated in cities across Russia. All the same, Russia's relationship with yoga has remained uneasy, with some official criticism and legal action against the teaching of yoga.