[5] In 1955, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made his first visit to the Soviet Union in June 1955, and First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev's return trip to India happened in the fall of 1955.

In India, Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union supported Indian sovereignty over the disputed territory of the Kashmir region and also over Portuguese coastal enclaves such as Goa.

[6] Throughout the 1950s, there was Soviet assistance and technology transfer in multiple industrial sectors such as steel, defense, railways, construction equipment, metal, mining, petrochemicals and more to India.

The Soviet Premier, Alexei Kosygin, met with representatives of India and Pakistan and helped them negotiate an end to the military conflict over Kashmir.

India supported the secession and, as a guarantee against possible Chinese entrance into the conflict on the side of West Pakistan, it and the Soviet Union signed the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in August 1971.

[15] Despite the 1984 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the mainstay of cordial Indian-Soviet relations, India maintained a close relationship with the Soviet Union.

According to Rejaul Karim Laskar, a scholar of Indian foreign policy, during this visit, Rajiv Gandhi developed a personal rapport with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

General Secretary Gorbachev unsuccessfully urged Rajiv Gandhi to help the Soviet Union set up an Asian collective security system.

[17] Gorbachev's advocacy of this proposal, which had also been made by Leonid Brezhnev, was an indication of continuing Soviet interest in using close relations with India as a means of containing China.