India and The Soviet Union PDF

India and the Soviet Union: Conjunctions and Disjunctions of Interests
Author(s): Ramesh Thakur

Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 31, No. 9 (Sep., 1991), pp. 826-846
Published by: University of California Press
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INDIA AND THE SOVIET UNION
Conjunctions and Disjunctions
of Interests
Ramesh Thakur
Warm relations with the Soviet Union have been a

constant in Indian foreign policy. A former Foreign Secretary (and known
Russophile) T. N. Kaul noted that "relations between India and the Soviet
Union are not a matter of temporary convenience or expediency, but the
cornerstone of our foreign policies." 1 Successive Indian governments have
continued to engage in friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and a for-
eign policy consensus in India has been very largely supportive of the rela-
tionship. More materially, when the Soviet Union was hit by a food crisis
in the winter of 1990-91, India responded promptly with a loan of a mil-
lion tons of wheat and a gift of 20,000 tons of rice.
Conversely, relations with India have been an anchor of Soviet Third
World policy,2 and South Asia has been a central target of opportunity for
the USSR in its struggle for influence in Asia. Moscow has used all the
tools of contemporary statecraft to gain and maintain its foothold in a
region that became crucial to its interests. In forging links with India,
Moscow gained an opening to an important regional power, to the Com-
monwealth grouping, and to the global Nonaligned Movement (NAM). It
was able to contrast its policy of peaceful coexistence with the Cold War-
obsessed search for military pacts by the U.S. and to buy respectability
early in its courtship of the emerging new nations of Africa and Asia. But
clearly, there is potential for tension as well as cooperation in relations
Ramesh Thakur is Associate Professor of Political Studies at the

University of Otago, New Zealand.
? 1991 by The Regents of the University of California
1. Triloki Nath Kaul, "A Personal View of the Soviet Union Through Forty Years," Inter-
national Affairs (Moscow), July 1988, p. 121.
2. Roger E. Kanet has written of the central role India has played in "The Evolution of
Soviet Policy Toward the Developing World," in Edward A. Kolodziej and Roger E. Kanet,
eds., The Limits of Soviet Power in the Developing World (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 54.
826
RAMESH THAKUR 827
between India and the Soviet Union. In this article, I propose to sketch
the conjunction of interests between the two countries, to outline sources
of clashing or competing interests, and to identify means by which the
latter have been managed so that the former may continue to prevail.
Conjunctions
The Indo-Soviet relationship is officially characterized as "dynamic, resili-
ent and stable."'3 It has withstood the vicissitudes of time and changes of
personnel in both countries. A. P. Venkateswaran, a former Indian foreign
secretary, gave nine reasons for the enduring strength of the relationship.4
Soviet leaders, he said, had always been attracted by India's vast reserve of
manpower. There are also apparently many similarities in the psychologi-
cal world views of Indian and Soviet leaders. India was also the first major
country to demonstrate the effectiveness of Soviet military hardware in
land, sea, and air battles, which encouraged Moscow to increase military
supplies and New Delhi to source them from the Soviet Union. Fourth,
Moscow and New Delhi consistently supported each other in their respec-
tive international relations. India and the Soviet Union discovered com-
monalities in international issues not involving each other, for example,
anticolonialism and opposition to apartheid. Sixth, Soviet willingness to
provide soft credits brought the two countries closer together economi-
cally, and the granting of such credits to the public sector cemented eco-
nomic ties between state enterprises in the two countries. Eighth, rupee
holdings by Moscow led to export promotion from India by necessity in
the early formative years, regardless of the quality of Indian goods. Ninth,
India subsequently sourced industrial raw materials from the Soviet Union
while supplying manufactured and semimanufactured items to it. To this
list a tenth factor may be added: both sets of leaders have displayed con-
siderable sophistication in massaging each other's individual and national
egos.
It has been said that, lacking in nonmilitary attributes, the Soviet Union
is an incomplete superpower.5 For India, at least, this has little validity.
New Delhi has found Moscow to be a complete, reliable, and trusted su-
perpower in all major dimensions. Thus, in a speech at a Kremlin dinner
in honor of Rajiv Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev noted economic ties, joint
space flights, cultural exchanges, and similarity of outlooks on peace and
3. Ministry of External Affairs, Annual Report 1986-87 (New Delhi: Government of India
Press, 1987), p. 35.
4. Author's interview with Venkateswaran, 16 February 1988, New Delhi.
5. Paul Dibb, The Soviet Union: The Incomplete Superpower (London: Macmillan, 1986).
828 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXI, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 1991
disarmament issues in his survey of the breadth and variety of the Indo-
Soviet relationship.
The most tangible demonstration of Soviet diplomatic support for India
has come at the United Nations on the issues of Kashmir, Goa, and Ban-
gladesh. Soviet support for India has been rather more constant than the
latter's policies on Sri Lanka. Moscow backed Indian support for the
Tamils in their confrontation with the government, including the airlifting
of food and medical supplies against the protests of Colombo. It then
found little difficulty in supporting the India-Sri Lanka accord of July 1987
and the subsequent military campaign waged by the so-called Indian
Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) against the Tamil Tigers. A more recent
manifestation of Soviet support came during the increase in tension be-
tween India and Pakistan over the mass protests in Kashmir in 1990. In
discussions with Foreign Secretary S. K. Singh in Moscow, Foreign Minis-
ter Eduard Shevardnadze reiterated the Soviet stand that Kashmir was an
integral part of India and supported the latter's determination to defend its
sovereignty and territorial integrity.6 Homage to the Soviet Union for
having stood by India in its various hours of need is an all too familiar
refrain by Indian politicians and scholars. Thus, Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi's eulogy to Leonid Brezhnev upon his death in November 1982:
"He showed a consistent understanding of our problems and stood by us in
our moments of need."7 Earlier, the same sentiment was voiced in Parlia-
ment by the supposedly less pro-Soviet Prime Minister Morari Desai of
the 1977-79 Janata government.
In addition to protecting vital interests against international censure, the
Soviet connection has been important to India for the modernization and
indigenization of its defense forces and equipment in keeping with India's
own assessment of its needs, both for counter-balancing possible American
and Chinese pressures and for economic assistance in the public sector. As
a former deputy chairman of India's powerful Planning Commission put
it, relations with the Soviet Union have helped to foster and preserve "In-
dia's dignity, India's sovereignty and India's independence."8 Soviet eco-
nomic and military assistance and diplomatic support have strengthened
the Indian state apparatus domestically, regionally, and internationally.
Close relations with the USSR served to legitimize the socialist credentials
of the ruling Congress Party in a country where the slogan of socialism is
6. Leonid Zhegalov, "A Humanitarian Act," New Times 24/87 (June 1987), pp. 7-8;
Sergei Irodov, "Abiding by the Agreement," New Times 6/88 (February 1988), p. 21; States-
man Weekly, 3 February 1990, p. 1.
7. Asian Recorder 1982, p. 16,947.
8. P. N. Haksar, "India's Sovereignty and Indo-Soviet Relations," in V. D. Chopra, ed.,
Studies in Indo-Soviet Relations (New Delhi: Patriot Publishers, 1986), p. 13.
RAMESH THAKUR 829
part and parcel of the populist rhetoric. Internationally, in the great

power triad (China-U.S.-USSR) only the Soviet Union was seen by Indians
as having an unequivocal stake in a stable and strong India. In the 1950s,
Moscow's policy was driven by the desire to resist Western efforts at encir-
cling the Soviet Union with a ring of military packs; in the 1960s and
1970s the main Soviet motive was containment of the People's Republic of
China. The emergence of a regionally dominant India was in the Soviet
interest in both cases.
In the 1980s, it was India that stood by the Soviet Union during its
international difficulties in the twin crises of Afghanistan and Cambodia,
and showed that it could be relied upon to try and solve or at least ease
Soviet problems. India's support is useful because of its influential role in
the NAM, at the United Nations,9 and as a Third World leader. Prior to
the Nonaligned foreign ministers' meeting in New Delhi in 1981, Moscow
appealed to India for help in its "hour of trial" as India had been helped by
the USSR during its own use of the military instrument in the liberation of
Goa (1961) and Bangladesh (1971).10 Expressions of Indian support on a
number of Soviet initiatives were comforting to Soviet leaders in the years
of international isolation while Afghanistan was occupied. They were also
valuable for internal propaganda, allowing the leaders to claim support for
their policies from a major independent country.
India has also been useful for demonstrating the possibility and the ben-
efits of peaceful cooperation between countries with different political and
economic systems. During his visit to India in 1986, Gorbachev described
relations between the two countries as "a guiding example for others." In
his 1987 interview with the Indonesian newspaper, Merdeka, he again de-
scribed the relationship as "exemplary." Soviet writers and speakers ad-
dressing audiences in other Third World countries similarly refer to Indo-
Soviet relations as a "model" of Soviet relations with developing countries.
India has also supported a range of international initiatives by Moscow.
Indian and Soviet rhetoric of international political (nuclear testing, racial-
ism in South Africa, the Palestinian problem) and economic (international
capitalism as an obstacle to a new international economic order) issues has
been often mutually reinforcing. Economically, trade between India and
the USSR is substantial and genuine. Militarily, unlike some other Soviet
arms recipients, India has not been a source of international opprobrium
9. A Canadian study concluded that India was the most influential country at the U.N.
after the two superpowers, ahead of Britain, China, and France. (Peyton V. Lyon, "Canada
at the United Nations," International Perspectives (September-October 1985), p. 16.)
10. Andrei Fialkovsky, "We Rejoice at Your Achievements," New Times 4/81 (January
1981), p. 8.
for using Soviet-supplied weapons to invade and occupy a neighboring

country.
Nonalignment
The Indian connection has been useful to the Soviet Union in pursuing
goals of eroding Western and containing Chinese influence in Asia, estab-
lishing its own presence in order to lend credence to claims of being an
Asian and a global power, demonstrating the reality of mutually advanta-
geous close relations between the leading socialist state and a leading Third
World state, and securing an entree to the Third World and the
Nonaligned Movement. Every one of these Soviet foreign policy goals
dovetailed neatly with the pursuit of a nonaligned foreign policy by India.
Yet, Moscow moved to support a posture of nonalignment only after ini-
tial suspicion. Nonalignment has enabled Indian leaders to bestride the
world like colossi, given Indian scholars something to write about from
home, and imbued Indian people with a sense of pride about an interna-
tional role befitting their country's greatness. Independent India was de-
termined to strike a path free of entangling alliances-indeed, it was keen
to undermine the system of military alliances; committed to political neu-
trality between the ideologically hostile blocs; interested in keeping great
power rivalries out of the South Asian and Indian Ocean areas; and cham-
pion of anticolonialism and antiracialism. Also, it soon acquired the nar-
rower national security objectives of containing Chinese influence and
attenuating U.S. military links with Pakistan. India was anxious, too, to
obtain a wide range of assistance for planned economic development.
Western commentators can sometimes adopt offensive and insulting
tones in belittling the pretensions of the Nonaligned Movement. 11 Where
the U.S. has appeared indifferent to Indian nationalist aspirations and hos-
tile to Indian nonalignment, the USSR has praised one and courted the
other. At Vladivostok in July 1986, Gorbachev lauded nonalignment as an
Asian response to the threat of a world divided into nuclear-armed blocs.
He added that "the acknowledged leader of this movement is great India,
with its moral authority and traditional wisdom, with its unique political
experience and its enormous economic possibilities."12 Nevertheless, by
1988 the USSR had begun to distance itself from the Havana attempt to
closet it as a natural ally of the NAM. Although this tenet was said to
have been based on the proximity of stands of the nonaligned and socialist
countries in the U.N., it was nonetheless acknowledged to have produced a
11. For example, the Washington Post editorial on the seventh NAM summit held in New
Delhi in March 1983, as reproduced in the Guardian Weekly, 23 March 1983, p. 16.
12. Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 27 August 1986, p. 6.
RAMESH THAKUR 831
cautious reaction in nonaligned countries and to have "distorted the genu-

ine nature of the Soviet approach to the movement."13
Cultural and Scientific Diplomacy

Growing political ties have also created substantial pro-Soviet interests in
the Indian bureaucratic and business sectors. Individual careers have been
affected by the development of Indo-Soviet relations, while the increased
economic strength of that relationship has in turn created a considerable
commercial vested interest in preventing any damage to it. More recent
additions to pro-Soviet interest groups include cultural, entertainment, and
travel industries. The study of the Russian language, society, and politics
provides opportunities to acquire knowledge about a foreign culture other
than the Anglo-American model, one that is European as well as Asian,
rich in its literature, and with claims to offer insights into the rapid trans-
formation of a feudal, primitive society into a modem industrial power.
The intimacy of Indo-Soviet relations meant too that Russians and Indians
could travel to each other's countries as scholars or tourists without arous-
ing too much controversy. Indo-Soviet friendship societies blossomed, and
annual prizes have been awarded for the promotion of bilateral friendship.
Scientific cooperation between India and the USSR was formalized with
the establishment of an Indo-Soviet Joint Committee of Scientists, which
held its first meeting in January 1968. In April 1985, the Indian National
Science Academy and the Soviet Academy of Sciences signed a protocol
for joint research in biotechnology, computer electronics, catalysis, applied
mechanics, and silicon technology. Rajiv Gandhi's visit to the USSR in
July 1987 was preceded by an exchange of the most representative national
scientific delegations to date and the signing on March 21 of a protocol for
long-term cooperation in science and technology. New forms of coopera-
tion included biotechnology, laser technology, efforts to develop powerful
electron accelerators, and the search for alternative sources of energy.
Expanding cooperation in space would have appealed to Rajiv Gandhi's
instincts. The first agreement between the Indian Space Research Organi-
sation (ISRO) and the Soviet Academy of Sciences was signed in May
1972 and provided for Soviet assistance in the fabrication and launching of
a satellite. Aryabhata, India's first space satellite named after a fifth cen-
tury Indian astronomer, was launched from the Soviet cosmodrome at
Baikonur on April 19, 1975, and three days later the two countries signed
an agreement for launching an earth observation satellite. The ISRO and
the Soviet Academy concluded another agreement in 1976 for constructing
13. Sergei Sinitsyn, "The Non-Aligned Movement," International Affairs (Moscow), July
1988, p. 66.
a satellite tracking and ranging station (STARS) in Tamil Nadu that be-
came operational in 1978. The Bhaskara-I satellite (named after a sixth
century astronomer and also the Hindi word for sun) was launched in June
1979 and Bhaskara-II in November 1981. Along with two Soviet cosmo-
nauts, India's first cosmonaut was lifted off from Baikonur aboard Soyuz-7
for a seven-day space odyssey in April 1984. The team performed a series
of joint experiments, photographing 40% of India's territory. Official
spokesmen claimed that the photographs added to the reservoir of knowl-
edge of the country's changing coastline, the ice cover of the Himalayas,
oil and gas deposits in Rajasthan, and fish potential in the Arabian Sea.
Indian pride and elation were evident in the editorials of major newspa-
pers, and both countries showered medals and other civic honors on the
entire team of Indian and Soviet cosmonauts. In March 1988, Rajiv Gan-
dhi informed Parliament, "amid cheers," that the first indigenous remote
sensing satellite had been launched successfully from the Baikonur cos-
modrome. India was only the fifth nation in the world to be engaged in
remote sensing of the earth's resources from outer space, after the U.S., the
USSR, France, and Japan. The following month, India and the USSR
signed a protocol permitting the sale of the Soviet Elbrus 3-1 and EC-1068
supercomputers to India. The protocol also provided for Indo-Soviet co-
operation in the manufacture of consumer electronics, ground radio navi-
gation and airport systems, optical fiber systems, and television and radio
broadcasting equipment.
The spectrum of the Soviet lobby in India includes the two main com-
munist parties, but the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society, a communist front
organization, suffers from the debilitating weakness resulting from excel-
lent relations between Moscow and the Congress Party, with the latter
having its own Friends of the Soviet Union association. Soviet propa-
ganda, directed at Indian elite opinion, has concentrated on building a pos-
itive image of the USSR rather than of a communist society. At no time
since the start of the Indo-Soviet relationship in the mid-1950s have Soviet
leaders shown great enthusiasm for the prospect of a communist govern-
ment in India. Congress-ruled stability was elevated over revolutionary
communism. In a 1973 speech at the Red Fort in New Delhi, Leonid
Brezhnev certified the progressive credentials of the Congress government
of Indira Gandhi, thereby relegating the Communist Party of India to "a
redundant appendage in Indian politics."114 Brezhnev might not have been
aware of it, but his proclamation from the ramparts of the Red Fort would
have been laden with symbolic significance for India's communists as un-
14. Robert H. Donaldson, The Soviet-Indian Alignment: Quest for Influence (Denver:
University of Denver Monograph Series in World Affairs, 1979), pp. 18-19.
RAMESH THAKUR 833
furling the Red Flag atop the Red Fort has been a long-cherished goal of
Marxist revolutionaries in India.
Disarmament and Arms Control

During the first term of the Reagan administration, world opinion was
alarmed at the thought that the U.S. had committed itself to a nuclear war
with the USSR. Suddenly, Moscow began to find a receptive international
audience for its propaganda onslaughts on U.S. nuclearisms. The proxim-
ity of Indian and Soviet stands on disarmament issues was in evidence with
the positive Soviet response to the six-nation (Argentina, Greece, India,
Mexico, Sweden, and Tanzania) initiative of January 1985. Gorbachev
took over in March, and in May he publicly identified the Soviet Union
with the six nations' effort to rid the world of nuclear weapons. This was
followed by a unilateral Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing in August.
At the meeting of the Delhi Six in Ixtapa in August 1986, Rajiv Gandhi
claimed that the Soviet moratorium on testing was in response to the six-
nation call. 15 The Nonaligned summit in Harare in September backed the
Delhi Six and its appeal for peace and disarmament was in turn warmly
welcomed by Gorbachev.
Indo-Soviet convergence was further underlined by Gandhi and
Gorbachev in November 1986 in their 10-point Delhi Declaration on Prin-
ciples for a Nuclear Weapon-Free and Non-Violent World. While the first
eight points were pious homilies, in points nine and ten India in effect
publicly associated itself with the unilateral Soviet nuclear test moratorium
and against the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program. Romesh
Bhandari, former foreign secretary and present convener of the foreign af-
fairs cell of the Congress Party, said the Declaration had "a significance
beyond bilateral relations," for it was "a blueprint for global existence in
the future."16 The Delhi Declaration became a staple of Soviet internal
and international propaganda as illustrating Gorbachev's new political
thinking and the parallelism of Indian and Soviet outlooks on world issues.
Gorbachev referred to it in his famous Merdeka interview in July 1987,
and again in his equally famous speech at Krasnoyarsk in September 1988.
In an interview with a U.S. journal toward the end of 1988, Rajiv Gandhi
noted areas of agreement between India and the USSR in the urgent need
to reduce strategic nuclear weapons, to conclude a treaty banning all nu-
clear weapons tests, and to work for an international convention to outlaw
the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.17
15. Peter J. S. Duncan, The Soviet Union and India (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 65.
16. Author's interview with Bhandari, 16 February 1988, New Delhi.
17. Defense & Foreign Affairs 16 (December 1988), p. 16.
Disjunctions
The breadth, depth, and durability of the bilateral relationship notwith-
standing, there are important points of divergence between India and the
Soviet Union. These are the product of separate origins, different goals,
and asymmetric capabilities. While the Soviets have found India a useful
conduit to the Nonaligned Movement, it is also true that India's founding
role in the movement stands as a barrier to too close a relationship be-
tween Moscow and New Delhi. Nonalignment is too deeply embedded in
the Indian political psyche for any government to give it up lightly for the
sake of strengthened ties with the USSR. Conversely, the fact that Mos-
cow supported the foreign policy aspirations of the nonaligned countries
did not necessarily mean that it was equally willing or able to accept
nonalignment or neutrality as an intermediate status between international
capitalism and socialism. It may be more accurate to conceive of Soviet
support for nonalignment as a broad strategy of military denial of Third
World regions to the West.18
Another obstacle to fraternal (as distinct from friendly) Indo-Soviet re-
lations, paradoxically enough, could be the very quest for an Asian iden-
tity by Moscow. Acceptance of the Soviet Union as a full-fledged Asian
power could only have an adverse effect on Indian ambitions for leadership
of the continent and preeminence in the subcontinent. It is perhaps not
insignificant that India's Ministry of External Affairs has traditionally in-
cluded coverage of relations with the Soviet Union under its chapter on
Europe.
In international relations, where regional rivalries can sometimes ap-
proximate zero sum games, friendship with one country is not always cost-
free. The price to Moscow of Indo-Soviet friendship includes opportunity
costs for friendly relations with other South Asian countries, most notably
Pakistan. In the Sino-Indian conflict, the Soviet Union chose to remain
neutral rather than support a fellow socialist country. India's image has
suffered somewhat in Southeast Asia. Indo-Soviet relations have also been
identified as one of the three obstacles to normalization of Sino-Indian re-
lations. (Although the reverse has been more significant: China's bad re-
lations with India and the USSR have helped to bring the last two closer
together.) By the end of the 1980s, the Soviet factor had been transformed
from an impediment into a spur to improving Sino-Indian relations.19
18. See Roy Allison, The Soviet Union and the Strategy of Non-Alignment in the Third
World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
19. Ramesh Thakur, "Normalizing Sino-Indian Relations," Pacific Review, no. 4 (March
1991).
RAMESH THAKUR 835
Despite, or perhaps because of the closeness of the Indo-Soviet nexus,

India has always taken care to ensure that joint communiques with the
USSR include references to the fact that their bilateral relations are not
aimed against any third country, as well as to differences in their social and
ideological outlooks. The differences in political culture also help to ex-
plain why the proliferation of Indo-Soviet friendship societies and the flood
of friendly exchanges have not left Indians all that impressed with the
quality of Soviet scholarship. The views of liberal intellectuals in India
have been characterized as strikingly similar to those of Western col-
leagues. An Indian political scientist explained this by saying that Soviet
scholars "come as academics but talk like diplomats."20 The corridors of
power in New Delhi are similarly unimpressed by the world of Soviet
scholarship and turn instead for inspiration and guidance to indigenous
ideas or Western scholarship. The U.S. lobby in India includes the ex-
panding upper middle class, which is more enamored of the Western than
the Soviet lifestyle. In informal conversations, Soviet officials pointedly
remark that India is really pro-West; it has a parliamentary democracy
and a capitalist economy, and virtually every important Indian has a son
or daughter resident in the West. The Indian elite prefers reading the ma-
jor Western newspapers and journals to the major Soviet ones, which inev-
itably plays a significant role in shaping world views more in sympathy
with the Western outlook. Indian academic links with the West easily ex-
ceed those with the USSR in number and intensity. According to one ana-
lyst, the "pro-Soviet lobby in India has been losing its influence in recent
years, while advocates of the U.S. cause have made steady gains,"'21 de-
spite the fact that two Indo-American friendship societies must compete
with about 1,500 Indo-Soviet societies.
Defections by Soviet personnel either visiting or resident in India, such
as that of Alexander Babiy in early 1988, is rare. A more serious area of
potential tension between India and the Soviet Union is the so-called carto-
graphic problem. Earlier Soviet maps depicting borders along Arunachal
Pradesh, Bhutan, and Tibet were corrected to India's liking. But Aksai
Chin in the Northwest continues to be depicted as a "disputed area."
Ideology
Close relations between India and the Soviet Union might seem to run
counter to expectations. One is the world's largest democracy with a be-
20. Stephen Clarkson, The Soviet Theory of Development: India and the Third World in
Marxist-Leninist Scholarship (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), p. 264.
21. Salamat Ali, "Voice of the Superpowers," Far Eastern Economic Review (hereafter
FEER), 25 February 1988, p. 37.
wildering myriad of political parties (including several variants of the

Communist Party), competing trade unions, and a robust press. The other
was the most powerful communist state where the party claimed a monop-
oly of political and trade union activity and the press was entirely sub-
servient to the interests of the ruling regime. Marxist ideology is the
antithesis to the caste-dominated majority Hindu society of India, not to
mention the substantial Muslim minority; culture and education turn In-
dian minds to the West rather than to the Soviet Union; and India's mixed
economy has produced a genuinely thriving class of entrepreneurs and a
large middle class heading toward a consumer society.
Ideological uneasiness has generally been kept below the surface. India
is neither socialist nor even socialist-oriented. Yet, Stalinist doubts about
the genuineness of Indian independence notwithstanding, India came to be
viewed as a "progressive" country. The Congress raj was regarded as a
national bourgeois regime pursuing antimonopolistic, antiimperialistic,
and antifeudal policies. An industrialization process based on capitalism
was acceptable in India because it was perceived as being independent and
therefore contrary to the interests of international capitalism and subna-
tional feudal remnants. Public sector industrialization was seen as a strat-
egy aimed at breaking the power both of international capitalism and of
feudal princes and landlords within India.
But not all ideological purists in the Soviet Union would have been
happy with the new relationship with a national bourgeois regime in India.
Some would also have recalled instances of Asian nationalists turning on
local communists, including Indians shortly after independence. But the
major policy problem for those who were skeptical of the new openings
was the lack of realistic alternatives if the Soviet Union was not going to
concede significant areas of the world to the West. Cooperation with
Third World nationalist governments could also be justified ideologically
in the long haul. In time, such regimes could perhaps be influenced into
converting to socialism by a friendly Soviet Union and by the demonstra-
tion effect of Soviet success.
In the 1980s, a reassessment of Third World strategy led Karen
Brutents, an influential Soviet official with responsibility for Third World
affairs, to recommend shifting Soviet attention away from Marxist-Lenin-
ist regimes to large and geopolitically important countries with better de-
veloped economies like Brazil, Mexico, and India.22 Premature transition
into socialism would no longer be encouraged; instead, the USSR would
concentrate upon exploiting the contradictions or conflicts of interest be-
22. Francis Fukuyama, "Gorbachev and the Third World," Foreign Affairs, no. 64 (Spring
1986), p. 721.
RAMESH THAKUR 837
tween the West and the capitalist-oriented Third World states. It has been
argued more recently that in relations with "capitalist-oriented" states like
India, the Soviet leadership has been receptive to the policy prescriptions
of the "national-capitalism" school.23 Economic and political instruments
of policy are given co-equal emphasis with military instruments in forging
a more diversified set of relationships with the Third World than would be
permitted if concentrating simply on "revolutionary democracies."
Nuclear Proliferation
State interests have generally prevailed over ideological sensibilities in re-
spect to nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union and the United States are the
two major status quo nuclear-weapon states (NWS), while India has been
the major challenger to the established NWS and their protectionist, oligo-
polistic policies on nuclear weaponry. Indian and Soviet interests have
diverged fundamentally on the important issue of nuclear weapons
proliferation. The argument by K. Subrahmanyam is germane: "those
who oppose the Indian nuclear options are in fact compelling this country
to rely permanently on the Soviet connection for her security."24 The dif-
ference in Soviet and U.S. reactions to India's nuclear program has been
that Moscow has subordinated its differences in the interests of maintain-
ing overall harmony, whereas the nuclear element has been one among
several irritants in the Indo-U.S. relationship. If India had presented the
world with a nuclear fait accompli, then the "Americans and their allies
would have been angry; the Russians would have been unhappy."25
The prospect of uncontrolled nuclear-weapons proliferation generates
widespread unease. In addition to the five known NWS, a handful of
countries are believed to possess clandestine nuclear weapons and might be
labeled the "basement NWS." Both India and Pakistan are assumed to
have nuclear-weapons capacity, if not nuclear weapons power status.
Nonetheless, short of a traumatic event like war, neither is likely to shift
from known capability to acknowledged acquisition. The "strategy of
ambivalence"26 permits the effective development of nuclear-wea
capability without incurring the adverse international penalties of open ac-
23. David E. Albright, "The USSR and the Third World in the 1980s," Problems of Com-
munism, no. 38 (March-June 1989), p. 65.
24. K. Subrahmanyam, ed., Nuclear Myths and Realities: India's Dilemma (New Delhi:
ABC Publishing House, 1981), p. vi.
25. Amalendu Das Gupta, "Challenge and Response," Statesman Weekly, 16 May 1987,
p. 12.
26. The phrase is from K. Subrahmanyam, "An Indian Perspective on International Se-
curity," in D. H. McMillen, ed., Asian Perspectives on International Security (London: Mac-
millan, 1984), p. 165.
quisition. A statement by the former chief of the Indian Army, General

K. Sundarji, is as close as one can come without actually abandoning the
threshold status in favor of openly declared nuclear-weapons capability:
"I am telling you in straightforward terms: an Indian planner should as-
sume that Pakistan has a certain nuclear-weapon capability, and similarly
any prudent Pakistani military planner ought to assume that India has got
a certain nuclear-weapon capability. And plan on that basis."27
New Delhi took a militantly anti-Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) pos-
ture from the start. India was lobbied hard during 1966-67 by Britain, the
U.S., and the Soviet Union-the three progenitors of the NPT-to sign the
treaty under negotiation. A Secretaries' Committee comprising the cabi-
net secretary (chair), defence and home secretaries, secretary of the
Atomic Energy Department, secretary to the prime minister, and the for-
eign secretary examined the draft NPT treaty in detail, considering the
likely impact of rejection on India's relations with China, the United States
and the Soviet Union; the economic consequences of rejection; and India's
security needs. There was a consensus in the committee that India should
not sign the NPT. Its views were supported by Foreign Minister M. C.
Chagla and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and endorsed by the cabinet in
May 1967.28 The Indian argument was expressed at its bluntest by former
Foreign Secretary M. K. Rasgotra at a conference in Islamabad in Septem-
ber 1987. Describing the NPT as the century's "most audacious hum-
bug," he remarked on "its unstated purpose of legitimising the great
powers' race of nuclear arms, their monopoly of nuclear weapons and their
hegemony over the non-nuclear world."29 The NWS that established the
NPT regime cannot escape the fundamental paradox that while they jus-
tify their own nuclear weaponry in national security terms, they seek to
deny nuclear weaponry to anyone else for reasons of global security. It
bears repeating that the USSR was a cofounder of the NPT regime and
every senior Indian official may be presumed to be aware of this fact.
Reciprocity of Silence
Moscow has been a longstanding advocate of nuclear weapon-free zones,
and India was one of the chief objectors in a U.N. study group looking at
the value and feasibility of setting up such zones in various regions of the
27. In an interview with FEER, 13 September 1990, p. 26.

28. This paragraph is based on chapter 17 of C. S. Jha, From Bandung to Tashkent:
Glimpses of India's Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Sangam Books, 1983). Jha was foreign secre-
tary at the time.
29. Maharajakrishna Rasgotra, "Nuclear Non-Proliferation Issues in South Asia," in
Eduardo Faleiro et al., Southern Asia-Pacific: Current Trends ( New Delhi: International
Institute for Southern Asia-Pacific Studies, 1987), pp. 38, 41-42.
RAMESH THAKUR 839
world. Yet, the Soviet Union forbore from joining the chorus of interna-
tional criticism leveled at India after its "peaceful nuclear explosion" of
1974. There is thus a reciprocity of silence between India and the USSR
regarding each other's actions that attract significant international con-
demnation. Soviet communist political culture married to traditional In-
dian values, which stress certain courtesies toward friends, reinforce the
predisposition to maintain a public silence on issues that divide Moscow
from New Delhi.
Overlapping interests between India and the Soviet Union on third party
issues of foreign policy were evident in the prompt recognition by New
Delhi of the new regime in Afghanistan after the Marxist coup of April
1978, in the futile vote against the Pol Pot regime taking the Cambodian
seat at the U.N. in 1979, and in the recognition of the Vietnamese-installed
Cambodian regime in 1981. Yet, the greatest source of tension in Indo-
Soviet relations during the 1980s was Afghanistan, as India was much crit-
icized for its policy of reticence vis-A-vis the Soviet invasion. In fact, the
strategy of reciprocal silence has been a consistent strand in the bilateral
relationship between the two countries-e.g., Indian silence about Soviet
invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The 1956 epi-
sode was particularly unfortunate for India's image in the West because of
the evident double standard applied by Nehru to the simultaneous Hun-
garian and Suez crises. Still, by the standards of friendly Indo-Soviet rela-
tions, India had in fact been quite pointed in some of its remarks on
Hungary. For example, speaking in the Lok Sabha in November 1956,
Nehru questioned both the cost and the final outcome of the Soviet mili-
tary triumph in Hungary, drew attention to the damage to Soviet prestige
in non-Western countries, and spoke of the great failure of communism if
the people of Hungary had yet to be converted to it after ten years of life
under that system. Such statements carry a particular poignancy when
read in 1991.
Thus, differences between Moscow and New Delhi are subordinated to
the larger cause of maintaining friendship. Indications of significant policy
differences are to be found not in harsh denunciations and mutual recrimi-
nations, but in polite failures to include contentious items in joint com-
muniques. The official Indian statement in the U.N. General Assembly
debate in January 1980 about friendship with the Soviet Union being a
factor in the muted Indian response to the invasion of Afghanistan was
uncharacteristic for its candor but not substance. Indira Gandhi remarked
in the Lok Sabha after Brezhnev's visit of December 1980 that while the
Soviet Union and India were not always in agreement on all international
issues, "the two countries were careful to see that these differences did not
come in the way of their bilateral relations." The reason for such mutual
understanding is that, in the final analysis, differences between the two

sides have always been secondary to an "awareness of the sameness of
their fundamental historical interests."30
This is not the least of the reasons why Indo-Soviet friendship was rein-
forced by a remarkably benign public image of the Soviet Union in India.
In an opinion poll published on the eve of Gorbachev's 1986 visit, 93% of
Indians were found to regard the USSR as India's best friend, compared to
only 6% who chose the United States.31 In a cross-national poii of 17-24
years-old university students conducted by a couple of U.S. scholars in the
summer of 1985, 20% of Indian respondents held the U.S. responsible for
the impasse in nuclear arms reduction, and 45% believed the U.S. to be
the greatest threat to international peace and security. The figures for the
USSR were 3% and 10%, respectively.32 In a 1987 poll of literate, urban
Indian opinion, 51.2% expressed fair to great confidence that the Soviet
Union would deal responsibly with world problems, with 26.8% expres-
sing little or no confidence. Corresponding figures for the U.S. were
28.2% and 48.1 %. More remarkably, only 3.7% of respondents favored a
lessening of Indo-Soviet relations, 26.9% were content to maintain rela-
tions at existing levels, and 57.5% wanted to strengthen ties still further.
The corresponding figures for the United States were 7.1%, 43.7%, and
36.3%.33 Indian perceptions of the USSR are reciprocated by Soviet citi-
zens. In a survey conducted by a French polling agency in 1987, India was
picked as the Soviet Union's second-best friend (the best was Bulgaria).34
Influence
India is not and cannot be a Soviet client. In fact "the Soviet Union, not
India, is the suitor in the relationship."35 Since 1971, with the establish-
30. Overseas Hindustan Times, 25 December 1980; editorial, "The Soviet Union and In-
dia," New Times 47/80 (November 1980), p. 1.
31. As reported in the Guardian Weekly, 30 November 1986, p. 6.
32. David W. Dent and Wayne C. McWilliams, "What College Students Think About the
International Role of the United States: A Six-Nation Study," International Studies Notes,
no. 12 (Fall 1986), Table 2, p. 52.
33. Monthly Public Opinion Surveys, no. 32 (May-June 1987), supplement, various tables,
pp. 3-6. The survey was conducted in March-April 1987 in the four metropolitan cities of
Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, and New Delhi, among a random sample (N = 1,500) drawn
from literates only, with nearly half the sample having a university degree or higher qualifica-
tion. The objective was to map the image of the superpowers held by "intellectual Indian
opinion." However, these polls could be terribly out of date in 1991. They should be read in
conjunction with my comment in the concluding section on the situation in India in mid-
1991.
34. Economist, 7 November 1987, p. 58.
35. Thomas P. Thornton, "Gorbachev's Courtship of India," Round Table, no. 304 (Octo-
ber 1987), p. 466.
RAMESH THAKUR 841
ment of India as the dominant power in South Asia, the Soviet Union has
played a reactive rather than a directive role in the region. Its relations
with India have been responsive, not coercive. When briefing I. K. Gujral
before his departure as India's ambassador to the USSR in 1976, Indira
Gandhi remarked that India was an indispensable factor for the Soviets in
Asia. Soviet influence in India is not commensurate with its remarkably
high prestige. Thornton argues that "the Indian act of taking Soviet sup-
port while giving little tangible in return is one of the more outstanding
feats of the contemporary international scene."36 Nor has there ever been
any evidence of substantial modification by India of political and economic
relations with third countries in deference to Soviet-determined priorities.
Indians tend not to be preoccupied with attempts to measure the direc-
tion and degree of influence in the Indo-Soviet relationship. Instead, they
focus on the convergence of interests. An interesting illustration of this
was provided by repeated Indian disclaimers in 1980 about advance infor-
mation on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. New
Delhi said this to demonstrate distance from Moscow and a conflict of
interests; Western governments interpreted the disclaimers as evidence of
lack of Indian influence in Moscow. Horn concluded that there is "only
very limited actual influence or leverage of a substantial nature by either
side" in the Indo-Soviet relationship.37 Consideration of each other's
views in formulating national foreign policies is a regular occurrence; sub-
ordination of national interests to bilateral ties does not take place. The
director of India's influential Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
(IDSA) argues that the Soviet Union has needed India more than the other
way around. As to whether Soviet behavior toward India would have been
as favorable if the need relationship had been reversed, he remarked that
he would not like India to be in that position.38
Winds of Change
The objective and perceptual bases of the Indo-Soviet relationship are not
as secure in the 1990s. Apprehension is detectable in official and media
comment in India on possible damaging repercussions on Indo-Soviet rela-
tions as a result of international changes. The relaxation of tensions be-
tween the superpowers and increased cooperation between them on a host
of international issues, nuclear negotiations, and regional problems have
36. Thomas P. Thornton, "The Security of South Asia: Analysis and Speculation," in
Stephen P. Cohen, ed., The Security of South Asia: American and Asian Perspectives (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1987), p. 218; also Robert C. Horn, Soviet-Indian Relations: Is-
sues and Influence (New York: Praeger, 1982).
37. Robert C. Horn, ibid., p. 220.
38. Interview with Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, New Delhi, 22 January 1988.
robbed nonalignment of its moorings. Even with the coming of the second
cold war during Reagan's first term, there was no U.S. pressure compara-
ble to that of the 1950s on Third World countries to abandon nonalign-
ment in favor of a military alliance with the United States. The Western
powers had shed virtually all colonial possessions and been won over to the
cause of combating racialism, two major planks that had pit nonaligned
and Soviet leaders against the West in an earlier era. Soviet actions in
Afghanistan, and indirectly in Indochina, raised suspicions in many
nonaligned countries about the Soviets' own antiimperialist credentials. A
polycentric international system had enlarged the room for maneuver of
all Third World countries.
The dramatic changes sweeping across Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union may also affect Indo-Soviet relations. A genuinely democratic
USSR with a multiparty system would obviously eliminate India's impor-
tance as a showcase of successful and profitable relations between coun-
tries of different political and social systems. By the same token, it would
also eliminate one of the major if latent anxieties that Indians have had
about close relations with a totalitarian regime. And India could become
attractive to Soviet leaders as a country that has managed to combine bu-
reaucratic socialism, a mixed economy, a genuine multiparty democracy, a
free press, and unity-in-diversity. We might also note in this connection
that detente with the West, withdrawal of Soviet forces from Eastern Eu-
rope, and reductions in conventional troop strengths are going to leave the
USSR with a considerable surplus of defense equipment. India's number
one ranking among all countries in the world as an arms recipient suggests
a natural convergence of interest between Moscow and New Delhi in this
area.
Ironically, in 1990 there was "much anguish" in India as a result of the
glasnost-induced critical attention in the Soviet media to Indian opposition
to the NPT, the lease of a Soviet nuclear-propelled submarine to India
(which was returned to the USSR in early 1991), soft-currency trade and
debt repayment arrangements (the most serious effect of which would
come from India having to purchase Soviet weapons in hard currency),
and the suspect stability of the government in New Delhi.39 There seemed
to be a perceptible end-of-era sense among commentators of the Indo-So-
viet relationship. Prime Minister V. P. Singh's visit to the USSR in July
1990 encapsulated both the continuity of the Indo-Soviet relationship and
the emerging hints of stress in it. Singh and Gorbachev agreed to renew
the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty for another five years, and a five-year
39. C. Raja Mohan, "Indo-Soviet Relations: The Return of Common Sense," Hindu (in-
ternational weekly edition), 18 August 1990, p. 9.
RAMESH THAKUR 843
trade agreement was signed as well. Gorbachev reiterated Soviet support

for India on Kashmir. Yet, India's profile has clearly been lowered in the
Soviets' international political landscape. Soviet ideological tensions have
been moderated in relations with the West, and the major Soviet thrust in
Asia has concentrated on China and Japan. Soviet foreign economic pol-
icy too is being reoriented fundamentally and will have a significant impact
on the Indo-Soviet trading relationship. The phase of dependence on the
USSR for development of heavy industry in India's public sector is overY40
Still, India has been reassured that Moscow is not so preoccupied with its
own problems as to break off traditional ties of friendship and cooperation.
A Soviet scholar argued that to jeopardize a tried and tested friendship
with India would be "stupid . .. fallacious . .. shortsighted" and lead to
destabilization of the Soviet border region.4
Conclusion
At its simplest, the explanation for the strength and durability of the Indo-
Soviet relationship is that the Soviet Union has proven to be responsive to
Indian needs and security concerns, and forthcoming with aid and support
when it mattered. India has reciprocated by being sensitive to Soviet cal-
culations in respect of policies that have drawn much international criti-
cism. Nevertheless, while there is a convergence of interests between
Moscow and New Delhi on most regional and international issues, there is
also the odd disjunction. India has differed from the Soviet Union on the
NPT, on the quest for a zone of peace in the Indian Ocean that would
exclude both superpowers from a competitive rivalry in the area, and on
the invasions of Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. The two
countries have not always synchronized their attempts at normalizing rela-
tions with China. In relations with Pakistan and other South Asian na-
tions, India's insistence upon a bilateral approach would have the effect,
not necessarily unintentional, of shutting out a Soviet as well as a Chinese,
U.S., or U.N. role.
Conditions were not neutral in the U.S.-Soviet competition for influenc-
ing the direction of Indian foreign policy in the 1950s. The United States
was required to invest a major effort to reorient India away from an in-
stinctive nonalignment and incorporate it into a global network of an-
ticommunist alliances. The USSR simply had to reinforce India's
40. The Indo-Soviet economic relationship is broad, deep, and complex. For a fuller de-
scription of it and an analysis of complementary and differing economic interests between
India and the Soviet Union, see Ramesh Thakur and Carlyle A. Thayer, Soviet Relations with
India and Vietnam (London: Macmillan, forthcoming), chs. 6 and 7.
41. Tatiana Shaumian, "Thirty-five Years Later," New Times 32/90 (August 1990), p. 7.
predispositions to remain aloof from the superpower rivalry. Washington

lost by not winning; Moscow won by not losing. Until the end of the
1980s, the United States was caught in something of a Catch-22 situation
insofar as hopes of loosening India's relations with the Soviet Union were
concerned. If relations between India and the United States were good,
then the Indo-Soviet relationship was offered by New Delhi as proof of the
authenticity of its nonalignment. If Indo-U.S. relations were strained, then
the link to Moscow became an essential counterweight guaranteeing In-
dian independence in foreign policy against U.S. pressure. Either way, In-
dians remained convinced of the vital importance of maintaining good
relations with the Soviet Union. The ebbs and tides of the Indo-Soviet
relationship have not altered the fundamentals. The relationship shows a
more or less steady upward trajectory. A host of framework agreements,
treaties of cooperation, and joint committees have been created in order to
give organizational structure to Indo-Soviet relations independently of per-
sonal and party fortunes in either country. India was one of the few stars
in the firmament of Soviet international relationships to continue to shine
brightly in the late 1980s. Its constancy was a source of reassurance to a
leadership beset by the uncertainties of meteoric falls of once apparently
firm satellites in the East European constellation. In 1989-9 1, as Pax
Sovietica unravelled in Eastern Europe, it became even more important for
the Soviet Union that established relations with a noncommunist country
like India should not repeat the dramatic failure of 45 years of Soviet Eu-
ropean policy.
The stable European and strategic environments meant that U.S.-Soviet
competition in these areas became highly routinized and stylized. The real
competition was for influence in the more fluid Third World. In Asia, the
USSR has been checked in the east by China and Japan, in the southeast
by ASEAN, and in the northwest by Pakistan. Vietnam had become a
liability because of the Cambodian imbroglio. Nor can any Soviet leader
be sanguine about events in the Middle East. In 1991 the Soviet military
establishment was reported as being restive about the threatened regime in
Iraq, previously a major Soviet client. An indifferent or hostile India
would leave the Soviet Union with no major asset in Asia. It is difficult to
envisage any other windows of opportunity that remain open to the Soviet
Union in Asia at low risk and cost. Diplomatic skill and political sensitiv-
ity have ensured that Indo-Soviet relations have survived the vicissitudes
of personal and party political fortunes in both countries. They will con-
tinue to be in demand as Moscow and New Delhi struggle with the chal-
lenges confronting them in the 1990s and beyond. India will explore paths
to improved ties with Pakistan, China, and the United States while ex-
panding the strength of its relationship with the Soviet Union and preserv-
RAMESH THAKUR 845
ing its independence of all major powers. The Soviet Union will seek to
come to terms with the rapidly changing pace of events throughout the
Pax Sovietica while normalizing relations with China, building bridges
with the West, repairing a damaged reputation in Afghanistan and Paki-
stan, and preserving its huge reservoir of goodwill in India.
The sense in July 1990 of an imminent end of an era in Indo-Soviet
relations has given way a year later to a sense of a new era having arrived
because of a confluence of a number of developments. At the start of the
1990s, Moscow had to cope with the threats of economic collapse, internal
chaos, and political irrelevance as layer after layer was removed from the
mask of communism around the world. The Gulf War has had a major
catalytic effect, both directly and derivatively, on the military, economic,
and political dimensions of the Indo-Soviet relationship. The trend to
marry Western weapons systems to Soviet hardware will almost certainly
intensify in the wake of the war. All countries will have noted the gap-
multiplier and casualty-reduction effects of modem technology. Most
were dazzled by the glitter of high-tech warfare using smart weapons and
precision guidance technology. A respected Indian defense journalist con-
cluded that in the 1980s India had "systematised its equipment around
acquisitions from the Soviet Union and also developed a battle doctrine
around them."42 The Indian defense establishment will need to study as-
siduously the abject performance of Soviet weaponry and the defects of
Soviet doctrines in the Gulf War. It will reinforce the Indian tendency to
rely on its own training and doctrines. Indian Air Force analysts believe
that it will become necessary to upgrade systems rather than planes.43 By
the same token, the war might have enhanced India's importance in the
eyes of the Soviet military establishment as the one country that does not
demonstrate the failure of Soviet supplies when matched against U.S.-
sourced weapons in a local war.
The Gulf War also showed that Moscow was prepared to stand on the
sidelines and see its considerable investment in a client regime destroyed.
One of the major attractions of sourcing weapons from the Soviet Union
has been its reliability as a defense supplier, particularly when the chips
were down and war had broken out. In the Gulf War in 1991, Moscow for
the first time let down a Third World client. Ironically, the Indian diplo-
matic support for Iraq was stronger than the Soviet. National security
policymakers in New Delhi will need to assess the implications of Soviet
behavior in the Gulf War for the other major recipients of Soviet weapons
and adjust patterns of sourcing defense supplies accordingly. Economi-
42. Manoj Joshi, "Tank Power," Frontline, 6-19 February 1988, p. 63.
43. Discussion with a senior IAF officer, 25 March 1991.
cally, the collapse of the Soviet Union as a source of comparatively cheap

oil was caused in part by the collapse of the trilateral India-Iraq-USSR
trade system. The need for new economic thinking was reinforced by In-
dia's own critical balance of payments crisis. The new government of P. V.
Narasimha Rao took note of India's economic woes, of even worse Soviet
economic ills, of the dissolution of the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe, of
the turmoil in the Soviet Union, and of America's enhanced global impor-
tance in a unipolar world-and concluded that a major improvement in
Indo-American relations is required.
The modern-day bases of power, influence, and prestige are going to be
economic performance, technological know-how, and capacity for innova-
tion. On these criteria, the United States, Europe, and Japan are better
placed than the Soviet Union to assist India. If power is understood as the
ability to maneuver through complex networks of actors and to effect one's
will in complicated arenas, then the United States remains the most power-
ful country today and will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. It is
unique in possessing all the bases of power: abundant natural resources, a
huge and dynamic market economy, and high technology. It is also better
placed in the 1990s than ever before to reap the benefits of its soft power
resources: the near-universal appeal of its society and way of life, and the
supremacy of its liberal internationalist ideology in such major institutions
as the European Community, the International Monetary Fund, and the
World Bank.
To paraphrase Marx, the role of the Soviet Union in developing India's
economic and military potential may have been historically progressive,
but it may have exhausted its productive potential. Accordingly, relations
with the Soviet Union may not necessarily be equally relevant for the
1990s and the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, on the credit side of the
ledger, having to confront similar problems might provide a ballast to
chart the relationship through unaccustomed turbulence. Both countries
are going to be struggling to achieve economic success by means of a
mixed but market-oriented liberalizing economy functioning within a mul-
tiethnic, multiparty competitive federal democracy. And because the
USSR itself has established good working relations both with China and
the United States, India too can seek to improve bilateral relations with
these countries without fear of potentially damaging consequences for its
relationship with the Soviet Union.

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India and the Soviet Union: Conjunctions and Disjunctions of Interests

Author(s): Ramesh Thakur

Warm relations with the Soviet Union have been a

Ramesh Thakur is Associate Professor of Political Studies at the

? 1991 by The Regents of the University of California

part and parcel of the populist rhetoric. Internationally, in the great

for using Soviet-supplied weapons to invade and occupy a neighboring

cautious reaction in nonaligned countries and to have "distorted the genu-

Cultural and Scientific Diplomacy

Disarmament and Arms Control

Despite, or perhaps because of the closeness of the Indo-Soviet nexus,

wildering myriad of political parties (including several variants of the

quisition. A statement by the former chief of the Indian Army, General

27. In an interview with FEER, 13 September 1990, p. 26.

understanding is that, in the final analysis, differences between the two

trade agreement was signed as well. Gorbachev reiterated Soviet support

predispositions to remain aloof from the superpower rivalry. Washington

cally, the collapse of the Soviet Union as a source of comparatively cheap

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