India-Russia relations have gone through a number of phases since their formal establishment in April 1947. Despite repeated projections of its decline following the end of the Cold War, India and Russia’s strategic partnership has persisted, and indeed in some areas has deepened. This brief argues that this could only mean that there is plausible geopolitical logic for both countries to persevere in strengthening their ties. It gives a historical account of the partnership, analyses its continued relevance for both countries, and ponders the impact of current geopolitical patterns on this relationship.

India and USSR established formal diplomatic relations in April 1947, four months before India’s independence. Early diplomatic relations were negligible, perhaps understandably so as Premier Joseph Stalin regarded the bourgeoisie of colonial and dependent countries as “conciliatory” and “counter-revolutionary” forces entering “a conspiracy” with imperialism behind the backs of their own peoples. This began to change towards the end of his life, and in his final years, two of the three ambassadors he received were Indian. The year 1955 was key for India-USSR relations, with then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visiting Moscow in June 1955 and Nikita Khrushchev conducting a reciprocal visit in November 1955. These two visits would set the pace of the relations for the next three decades.

India-USSR relations could broadly be described as having stood on five pillars.

First was strategic alignment. While India and the USSR did not share a similar ideology or outlook towards global politics, they had common concerns. India had cause to worry with the US-Pakistan bonhomie, while the Soviet Union saw the US as an implacable foe. In the 1960s the deterioration of relations of both countries with China brought them closer. The Soviet Union would emerge as a critical partner for India, using its veto power multiple times at the UN Security Council on issues related to Goa, Kashmir, and Bangladesh. India reciprocated by abstaining in the vote against USSR during the Hungary crisis in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation signed in 1971 was the culmination of the intensifying partnership. It included a critical security provision under which both would “abstain from providing any assistance to any third party that engages in armed conflict with the other Party. In the event of either Party being subjected to … a threat thereof, the High Contracting Parties shall immediately enter into mutual consultations in order to remove such threat and to take appropriate effective measures to ensure peace and the security of their countries.” Soviet assistance would also prove instrumental in keeping the US and China out of the 1971 war with Pakistan. All factors considered, it is no surprise that India’s partnership with the USSR emerged as a focal point of its foreign policy.

Second was the economic relationship. Soviet Union was the largest foreign contributor to India’s development till 1991. In the 1960s it played an important role in the development of India’s heavy industries including power, coal, mining, steel, oil and gas. Starting with the Bhilai steel plant, the Soviet Union helped India establish some of its biggest industries including ONGC and BHEL. Economic ties were bolstered by the rupee-rouble arrangement which allowed India to use its then scarce foreign exchange reserves on other vital needs. This arrangement covered all aspects of India-Russia economic activity, including crude supplies via Iraq, defence purchases, and even tourism. By 1991, the Soviet Union had become India’s largest trading partner and bilateral trade stood at over $5 billion per year, a large amount in those years.

The third pillar was defence cooperation. Defence constituted a critical part of the Indo-USSR relationship with the bulk of India’s arms purchases coming from the Soviet Union. Dilip Mukerjee identified four reasons why India favoured Soviet defence purchases: the price factor—the prices offered to India by the USSR were lower than those offered by the West; the evolutionary nature of Soviet weapons development process—as many of the upgraded versions included features of the existing models, it became cheaper to restructure the production lines; the Soviet Union was amenable to Indian requests for licensed production, beginning with the MiG-21 agreement in 1962 followed by MiG-27 ground attack fighters in 1983 and T-72 tanks in 1980; and fourth was the Soviet willingness to accept a barter arrangement under which exports in categories such as industrial consumer goods were acceptable. The reluctance of Western countries to engage with India also contributed to New Delhi choosing to deal with Moscow. That the Soviet Union leased to India a nuclear-powered submarine in 1988 spoke volumes about the level of trust the two countries developed in military exchanges.

The fourth pillar was cooperation in science and technology, underpinned by the Science and Technology Agreement of 1972. A joint working group on Science and Technology was set up to coordinate activities. The Integrated Long-Term Programme of Cooperation (ILTP), the largest bilateral S&T program that India had entered with any country at the time, was implemented in 1987. Within the framework of ILTP, from 1984 to 1989, the two countries jointly developed 112 themes in 22 priority scientific areas, including solar energy use, metallurgy, metals manufacture, high pressure physics, meteorology and oceanography.

Fifth, the cultural and people-to-people relations. The two countries had extensive academic, artistic and cultural exchanges. Writers like Leo Tolstoy and Alexander Pushkin had a profound influence on Indian literature and thought. Similarly, Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and others found resonance among Russian readers. The Soviet Union also contributed to India’s education sphere by providing cheaper books on maths, sciences and education as well as translations of well-known Russian writers. Indian film festivals were also a regular feature in the USSR and many Indian movies became household names. The Soviet Union emerged as a popular location for technical, medical and scientific studies, resulting in many Indian doctors and engineers being trained in the USSR.

The Soviet Union’s collapse was a blow for India, contributing to an ongoing economic crisis that started in 1991. While the Russian Federation emerged as a successor state, it was nonetheless a new and different political entity with a leadership trying to find its moorings. This led to a recalibration of relations between Russia and India.