The religious movement known as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) was founded by the Indian religious teacher Abhay Charan De Bhaktivedanta (1896-1977), who went by the ritual name Bhaktivinanda Swami Shrila Prabhupada. The movement first showed up in Russia in 1971. At the present time the Association of ISKCON Communes in Russia consists of a number of regional branches with more than 12,000 believers. According to data of the International Network for Information About Cults, ISKCON is classified among the religious groups that use methods of manipulating people's consciousness to recruit and assimilate members and exercise total control over its adepts. Religious groups of this kind have been designated as "destructive" cults. Yet most studies of destructive cults are based on conjecture and superficial observations, and lack an empirically verifiable base within the framework of a specific cult community. Research on the characteristics of the personality of young people who have joined the Hare Krishna cult in Russia shows that this affiliation deepens their sense of separation from the surrounding culture, and leads them to see membership in the cult as their primary loyalty. (Contains 3 tables.) [This article was translated by Kim Braithwaite.]