United Pakistan – USSR relations

See also: British India – USSR relations

West Pakistan & East Pakistan—Soviet Union relations

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics	(United PAKISTAN)   (Occupied Kashmir)

Pakistan and the Soviet Union had complex and tense relations. During the Cold War (1947–1991), Pakistan was a part of Western Bloc of the First World and a close ally of the United States. The Soviets had opposed the formal Partition of British India and the Creation of Pakistan as it stood before 1971. On the 1st of May in 1948, Karachi and Moscow officially established relations and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, in 1949, invited Pakistani prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan to visit Moscow, though Khan instead visited the United States in May 1950. From 1948 to 1958, the Soviet Union enjoyed relatively healthy and strong relations with Pakistan when it was under civilian control, but they went ultimately cold soon after the US-backed 1958 military coup d'état, although attempts to warm relations were made after the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War. Since then, Pakistan Peoples Party had been sympathetic to the Soviet Union, although it never allied with the Soviet Union nor the United States. The Soviet Union had extremely close relations with the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Communist Party of Pakistan. While capitalism has always held its sway, the prevalence of the socialist ideology has nevertheless continued to be found in a number of instances in Pakistan's political past and prominent personalities.

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