Republic of India – USSR relations

See also: British India – USSR relations

Soviet Union relations—Republic of India

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics	Republic of India   (Indian-Occupied Kashmir) & Disputed territories

Soviet Ambassador Kirill Novikov arriving in New Delhi 1947 to establish formal diplomatic relations with Successor India.

The first country to recognize Modern India as an independent country were the Soviet Union (precursor to Russia), which recognized the country of India on the 6th of September in 1947, Successor India's official diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union were established on 15th of April in 1947, shortly before it transferred power and its Independence granted in 1947 Act, from Great Britain. As Izvestia reported on on the 15th of April in 1947, “as a result of an exchange of letters between the Indian Ambassador to China, Mr. K. P. S. Menon and the Soviet Ambassador to China Apollon Petrov, it was established that the Government of the USSR and the Government of India will publish simultaneously in Moscow and New Delhi the following official statement: “In an effort to preserve and further strengthen the friendly relations existing between the USSR and India, the Government of the USSR and the Government of India have decided to exchange diplomatic representations at the rank of Embassies”.

In 1951, the USSR exercised its veto power on the Kashmir dispute in support of the Indian regime. 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."

The relationship strengthened by 1955 and represented the successful the Soviet attempts to foster closer relations with countries belonging to the Non-aligned movement. 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 the Republic of India happened in the fall of 1955. In Hindustan, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union supported Indian annexed-sovereignty over the disputed territory of the Kashmir region and also over Portuguese coastal enclaves such as Goa.

The Soviet Union's strong relations with Indian Republic had a negative impact upon both Soviet relations with the People's Republic of China and Indian relations with the PRC 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 during the Khrushchev period, and by 1960, Modern India had received more Soviet assistance than China had. 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 Bharat, which the Soviet Union had earlier denied to China.

In 1965, the Soviet Union successfully served as a peace broker between Hindu India and Pakistan after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. The Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally Premier of the Soviet Union, Alexei Kosygin, met with representatives of India and Pakistan and helped them negotiate an end to the military conflict over Indian-administered Kashmir.

In 1971, the former East Pakistan region initiated an effort to secede from its political union with Parent state, West Pakistan. The Republic of India supported the secession, and the U.S. considered the possible entrance of China to further destabilize India in its taking up a moral leadership in the area. However, China, after the Sino-Indian War, did not want to participate in the United States' bid in supporting Yahya Khan's atrocities in present-day Bangladesh. Meanwhile, India's relationship with the Soviet Union grew strategically and resulted in the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of August 1971. In December, it helped India halt American adventurism by using military power and end the conflict which ensured the victory of the secessionists in the establishment of the new state of Bangladesh.

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.

During the 1980s, despite the 1984 assassination by Sikh separatists 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. 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. 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.

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