The Soviet Union's Partnership with India

Abstract

The relationship between the Soviet Union and India was a hallmark of the Cold War. Over nearly forty years, Soviet-Indian relations passed through three distinct periods, coinciding with the ascendance of three extraordinary pairs of leaders, each extraordinary for different reasons—Jawaharlal Nehru and Nikita Khrushchev, Indira Gandhi and Leonid Brezhnev, and Rajiv Gandhi and Mikhail Gorbachev. The rise and decline of a political dynasty in India paralleled the trajectory seen in the Soviet Union. None of the periods ended well—the first in debacles with China, the second with Indira Gandhi's assassination, the third with the demise of the Soviet Union. The relationship in its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s was the product of a unique set of circumstances during the early Cold War. In the end, however, the relationship proved to be little more than a sideshow in the larger drama of the Cold War.

Philanthrocapitalism, past and present: The Rockefeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the setting(s) of the international/global health agenda

“…As international health became a pawn in the Soviet-American competition for power and influence (the Soviet bloc pulled out of the WHO in 1949, returning only in the mid 1950s), many countries also learned to play the rivals against one another, sometimes stimulating improved social conditions, other times exacerbating unequal power and control over resources (72)(73)(74). Under Indira Gandhi, for example, India received as much or more aid from Washington as from Moscow, with both superpowers eager to accede to New Delhi's requests for foreign development assistance (75).…”

Postcolonial geographies and colonialism's mutations: The geo‐graphing of South Asia

“…Any appearances during Truman's administration to be evenhanded with India and Pakistan by stressing their interdependence were extinguished with Eisenhower's so‐called “tilt” of a U.S.–Pakistan military alliance in 1954. Following Stalin's death in 1953, American and Soviet policies in the region struggled to preserve the precarious geopolitical balance (Mastny, ). American military alliances, economic aid, and diplomatic maneuvers constructed the region, like much of the vast Third World, along a spectrum of threats and opportunities, with the goal of expanding American‐led capitalism and constraining Soviet influence.…”

Neutrality as an instrument for small state manoeuvring and the globalisation of neutrality in the Cold War

“…India moved even one step further invoking 'the psychological effects of the Chinese nuclear program' as justification for not wanting to 'give up the option of nuclear weapons if the NPT is not a step towards total nuclear disarmament by all nations'. 44 A representative of India's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that 'this treaty […] creates discriminatory conditions for its aims at disarming the unarmed', while President Nyerere admitted that Tanzania was not in a position to build nuclear weapons. On the other side, the Soviets published a statement pointing out that the declaration was in the same direction as Soviet proposals for a nuclear freeze.…”