The Soviet leader returned to India in 1988 to implement the principles of the Delhi Declaration. This visit strengthened Soviet-Indian relations in trade, economy, science, technology, and culture, and entailed the signing of many inter-governmental agreements such as for the construction of a nuclear power plant in India, cooperation in the exploration and peaceful use of space, and more.
It was also on this trip that the Soviet leader was awarded the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development.
But communists in India looked with suspicion upon Gorbachev’s outreach to Asia and his policy to help resolve regional disputes. According to reports during his 1988 trip, Indian communists suspected that Leftist guerrillas and governments in Asia and Africa would “no longer be able to count on the Soviets”.
Also Read: India-Russia working on new payment system for defence deals amid more sanctions
New thinking on foreign, defence policy
Gorbachev turned much of Soviet defence and foreign policy on its head by deciding to thaw relations with the US, pull troops out of Afghanistan, and work to improve relations with all neighbours, including India and Pakistan.
Working to defuse US-Soviet nuclear tensions in the 1980s and bringing Eastern Europe out from behind the Iron Curtain were some of his lasting legacies. But, it came with a price. While he was admired in the West, Gorbachev invited harsh criticism from his own countrymen, who lamented the end of the Soviet Union as a global superpower.
As researchers Jiri Valenta and Frank Cibulka point out in their book ‘Gorbachev’s New Thinking and Third World Conflicts’, the Soviet leader, upon ascending to power in 1985, distanced himself from the “ideologically rigid and militarily threatening posture towards the region” followed by predecessors like Leonid Brezhnev.
Instead, there emerged a new thinking, especially on Afghanistan as evident in the “changed tone of Gorbachev’s reference to it as a krovotochashchaia rana (bleeding wound)”.
The authors also note a change in tone vis-a-vis Pakistan.
For example, in Gorbachev’s report to the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1986, criticism of Pakistan for supporting and housing Afghan rebels, as was the practice under previous Soviet leaders like Brezhnev, was missing.
Source: The Print
