Though they don't share a border, India and the Soviet Union were steadfast friends. India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru found solace in the Russian brand of Socialism, and was enamoured by the 'Soviet experiment.'
Nehru's impressions about the Soviet Union were probably formed during a brief visit to Moscow in 1927. In June 1955, accompanied by daughter Indira Gandhi, Nehru paid his first official visit to the USSR. This was quickly followed by a visit to India by a huge official delegation led by Nikita Khrushchev, then first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and Premier Nikolay Bulganin in November that year.
'In the balance, therefore, I was all in favour of Russia, and the presence and example of the Soviets was a bright and heartening phenomenon in a dark and dismal world,' Nehru declared in a speech in Washington, DC, December 18, 1956.
Photograph: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with Leonid Brezhnev, then the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR, during his visit to India in December 1961. Brezhnev would succeed Nikita Khrushchev after the Communist Party ousted him in 1964. Photograph: Courtesy and copyright the Russian News and Information Agency, RIA Novosti. Used with permission.
Also see: India-Russia: Strategic brotherhood
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