British India – USSR relations

Main articles: United Pakistan – USSR relations and Republic of India – USSR relations

British India—Soviet Union relations

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics	British India

The British and Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941, Indian soldiers from the 8th and 10th Indian Infantry Divisions, 2nd Indian Armoured Brigade and 21st Indian Infantry Brigade took part in the invasion and subsequent occupation.

The British Empire found itself challenged both at home and abroad following the Allied victory in World War I. Nationalism was burgeoning throughout its colonies, with India as Britain's greatest concern. At home the emergence of a Marxist regime in the newly established Soviet Union proved that a working class revolution was possible. With Britain fully industrialized, the Bolsheviks represented a mortal enemy to an imperial power such as the British Empire. Through a combination of hostile rhetoric originating from the Soviet Union, increased nationalist organization in India, and the historic rivalry in Central Asia, British leadership became wary of Soviet influence in its largest colony. The British colonial government was underfunded and under resourced in India when compared to its sheer size and population. Efforts to understand the growing political situation proved to be impossible. For the intelligence community in India, this meant that information had to be prioritized. The overall atmosphere of hostility to all things Bolshevik in British leadership predisposed its intelligence agencies to preferentially seek information on anything that could be connected back to the Soviet Union. What emerged was a picture of Bolshevik intrigue infiltrating into the Indian nationalist movement, allowing British leadership to partially blame the Soviet Union for the instability in India. The prejudice towards this strain of Indian nationalism was overplayed in the minds of the British, and allowed them to attach blame to a foreign power rather look towards their own treatment of Indians as reason enough to agitate for independence.

British India and Tuva

Tuva—British India relations

People's Republic of Tuva	British India

Britain aimed to create a protectorate in Afghanistan, and support the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Khiva, and Bukhara as buffer states against Russian-Soviet expansion. Until the mid-tenth century the territory of Tuva was included in the. Turkic and Uyghur Kaganats. It was conquered by Mongols at the beginning. Then in the 20th century it was absorbed into present-day Russia.

📰 Article(s) of the same category(ies)

• United Pakistan – Emirate of Bahrain (1971–2002) relations
• British India – British Mauritius relations
• British India – Kingdom of Yugoslavia relations
• Achaemenid Pakistan
• National symbols of Czechoslovakia (1948–1990)
• National symbols of the Khuzestan Arab State
• United Pakistan

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