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India and the Soviet Union had cooperative and friendly relations.^[1] During the Cold War (1947–1991), India did not choose sides between the Capitalist Bloc and the Communist Bloc and was a leading country of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Relations ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

History

Russia had wanted to strengthen commercial, cultural and literary ties with India, and had wanted to open diplomatic office in India at least since 1860, but the then British government in India was against it. The first consulate of Russia was opened in Mumbai in November 1900. Mumbai at the time was also a comfortable stopover for Haj pilgrims from the Asian republics under Russian rule. In 1910, the consulate was moved to Kolkata.

Official relations were established in 1947 after India's independence. While Soviet leader Joseph Stalin initially had a negative view of India, it later changed.^[2] In 1951, the USSR exercised its veto power on the Kashmir dispute in support of India.^[3] In 1953, Joseph Stalin told Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan that, "Both you and Mr. Nehru are persons whom we do not consider our enemies. This will continue to be our policy and you can count on our help."^[4]

The relationship strengthened by 1955 and represented the successful the Soviet attempts to foster closer relations with countries belonging to the non-aligned movement.^[5] In 1955, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made his first visit to the Soviet Union in June 1955, and First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev's return trip to India happened in the fall of 1955. In India, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union supported Indian sovereignty over the disputed territory of the Kashmir region and also over Portuguese coastal enclaves such as Goa.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviet Union significantly expanded KGB operations in India. In 1959 it created an import-export bank to subsidize the Communist Party of India (CPI). The KGB also exerted influence over Indian media, reportedly maintaining over ten newspapers on its payroll and placing over 3,789 articles in Indian publications in 1973 alone, more than in any other non-communist country.

The KGB carefully cultivated a close relationship with Indira Gandhi, surrounding her with male admirers during her 1953 visit to the Soviet Union. The KGB planted false stories against Gandhi's political opponents. And in 1969 encouraged the Indian communist parties to support Gandhi against her rivals in the Congress party. After the 1971 election Gandhi appointed the former Communist Mohan Kumaramangalam to the government, signed a secret Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Co-operation with the Soviet Union and lifted limits on the size of the Soviet embassy staff.^[6]

Throughout the 1950s, there was Soviet assistance and technology transfer in multiple industrial sectors such as steel, defense, railways, construction equipment, metal, mining, petrochemicals and more to India. The Soviet Union's strong relations with India had a negative impact on both Soviet relations with China and Indian relations with China, during the Khrushchev period. The Soviet Union declared its neutrality during the 1959 border dispute and the Sino-Indian War of October 1962, although the Chinese strongly objected. The Soviet Union gave India substantial economic and military assistance and by 1960 India had received more Soviet assistance than China had.^[7] This disparity became another point of contention in Sino-Soviet relations. In 1962 the Soviet Union agreed to transfer technology to co-produce the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 jet fighter in India, which the Soviet Union had earlier denied to China.^[8]

In 1965, the Soviet Union successfully served as a peace broker between India and Pakistan after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The Soviet Premier, Alexei Kosygin, met with representatives of India and Pakistan and helped them negotiate an end to the military conflict over Kashmir. The death of the then Indian Prime Minister Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri at Tashkent, Uzbekistan, USSR, immediately after the Tashkent Peace treaty still remains an issue of controversy.^[9]

In 1971, the former East Pakistan region initiated an effort to secede from its political union with West Pakistan. India supported the secession and, as a guarantee against possible Chinese entrance into the conflict on the side of West Pakistan, it and the Soviet Union signed the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in August 1971. When the US sent its 7th Fleet and the UK sent its HMS Eagle, its allies, the Soviet Union, sent its Vladivostok Fleet and successfully pushed the Americans and British away.^[10] In December, India entered the conflict and ensured the victory of the secessionists and the establishment of the new state of Bangladesh.^[11]^[12]

Relations between the Soviet Union and India did not suffer much during the right-wing Janata Party's coalition government in the late 1970s, although India did move to establish better economic and military relations with Western countries. To counter these efforts by India to diversify its relations, the Soviet Union proffered additional weaponry and economic assistance.^[13]^[14] The KGB's influence was diminished however. For instance, articles planted by the KGB in the press declined from 1,980 stories in 1976 to 411 in 1977.^[15]

Despite the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the mainstay of cordial Indian-Soviet relations, India maintained a close relationship with the Soviet Union. Indicating the high priority of relations with the Soviet Union in Indian foreign policy, the new Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, visited the Soviet Union on his first state visit abroad in May 1985 and signed two long-term economic agreements with the Soviet Union. According to Rejaul Karim Laskar, a scholar of Indian foreign policy, during this visit, Rajiv Gandhi developed a personal rapport with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.^[16]

In turn, Gorbachev's first visit to a Third World state was his meeting with Rajiv Gandhi in New Delhi in late 1986. General Secretary Gorbachev unsuccessfully urged Rajiv Gandhi to help the Soviet Union set up an Asian collective security system.^[17] Gorbachev's advocacy of this proposal, which had also been made by Leonid Brezhnev, was an indication of continuing Soviet interest in using close relations with India as a means of containing China. With the improvement of Sino-Soviet relations in the late 1980s, containing China had less of a priority, but close relations with India remained important as an example of Gorbachev's new Third World policy.^[18]

Country Comparison


Common Name	India	Soviet Union
Official Name	Republic of India	Union of Soviet Socialist Republic
Emblem
Flag
Population	846,387,888 (1991)	286,730,819
Capital	New Delhi	Moscow
Largest city	Delhi	Moscow
Government	Federal parliamentary republic	See Government of the Soviet Union
First Leader	Jawaharlal Nehru	Vladimir Lenin
Last Leader	P. V. Narasimha Rao (1991)	Mikhail Gorbachev
Religion	State secular (de jure)	State secular (de jure), state atheism (de facto)
Official languages	Hindi and English	Russian

References

^ "Indo-Soviet relations and cultural diplomacy during the premiership of Indira Gandhi" (PDF). Retrieved 28 March 2024.
^ "110 years of Indo-Russian diplomatic ties". The New Indian Express. Thiruvananthapuram: Express Publications. 27 November 2010. Retrieved 25 January 2023.
^ Ahmar, M. (1989). The Soviet Role in South Asia, 1969-1987. Area Study Centre for Europe, University of Karachi. p. 28.
^ Addy, P. (2018). TIBET : PAWN AND PIVOT OF THE GREAT GAME. Academic Publishers. p. 245. ISBN 978-93-87162-14-3.
^ Vojtech. Mastny, "The Soviet Union's Partnership with India." Journal of Cold War Studies 12.3 (2010): 50-90. Online
^ Andrew, Christopher M.; Mitrokhin, Vasili (2005). The world was going our way: the KGB and the battle for the Third World. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00311-2. OCLC 61515235.
^ Stein, Arthur (1967-03-01). "India and the USSR: The Post-Nehru Period". Asian Survey. 7 (3): 165–175. doi:10.2307/2642235. ISSN 0004-4687.
^ Donaldson, Robert H (1972). "India: The Soviet Stake in Stability". Asian Survey. 12 (6): 475–492. doi:10.2307/2643045. JSTOR 2643045.
^ "DNA Special: 56 years of Lal Bahadur Shastri's mysterious death in Tashkent". DNA India. Retrieved 2023-11-22.
^ "When Russia Stunned US & UK Naval Forces And Helped India Win The 1971 War". IndiaTimes. 2022-03-01. Retrieved 2024-01-13.
^ "BANGLADESH LIBERATION WAR OF 1971: DECISIVE ROLE OF INDIA IN MEDIATION AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION; AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN BANGLADESH". IRPJ = Intergovernmental Research and Policy Journal. Retrieved 2024-01-13.
^ Andrio, Drong (2016). "India's role in the Emergence of Bangladesh as an independent state". Вестник Российского университета дружбы народов. Серия: Международные отношения (4): 736–744. ISSN 2313-0660. During the penultimate days of Indo-Pak war over Bangladesh, the Soviet veto in the UN Security Council against US backed proposal for ceasefire paved the way for the Indo-Bangladesh allied forces to march into Dhaka and secure the defeat and surrender of 90 thousand Pakistani troops on the 16th December 1971.
^ "The Soviet Union's Partnership with India". Retrieved 28 March 2024.
^ "THE JANATA PARTY AND INDO-SOVIET RELATIONS". Retrieved 28 March 2024.
^ Andrew, Christopher M.; Mitrochin, Vasilij N.; Mitrochin, Vasilij N. (2005). The world was going our way: the KGB and the battle for the Third World. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00311-2.
^ Laskar, Rejaul (September 2014). "Rajiv Gandhi's Diplomacy: Historic Significance and Contemporary Relevance". Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist. 2 (9): 47. Archived from the original on 21 February 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
^ "Why Rajiv Gandhi hailed Mikhail Gorbachev as a 'crusader of peace'". The Indian Express. 2022-09-01. Retrieved 2024-01-13.
^ Garver, John W. (1991). "The Indian Factor in Recent Sino-Soviet Relations". The China Quarterly (125): 55–85. ISSN 0305-7410.