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Monday, Jun 20, 2005

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Opinion - News Analysis

Chronicle of a truly historic visit

Inder Malhotra

What Nehru and the Soviet leaders said to each other retains some resonance even though the Soviet Union is no more and the international ambience has changed hugely.

READERS OF this newspaper's delightful daily feature "This Day That Age" must have noticed that on several days in succession this month the excerpts from the pages of The Hindu of 50 years ago have related to Jawaharlal Nehru's truly historic visit to the Soviet Union in June 1955. Fascinating is the only word that can describe the reports of half a century ago that have been reproduced now. Most of these concentrate, however, on the exceedingly warm, indeed exuberant, welcome given by the Government and people of the USSR to India's first Prime Minister, the first non-Communist leader to be so treated all across that country from the virgin snowfields of Siberia to ancient cities of Central Asian Republics.

Moreover, since 1917, Nehru was the only non-Communist invited to speak to Soviet audiences not only in Moscow but also in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Kiev, Tashkent, Alam Ata, Samarkand, Ashkabad and so on, during his travels within the Soviet Union totalling 13,000 km. One more fact that might be mentioned in this jet age is that Nehru had left Delhi on June 4, and flying via Bombay, Cairo and Rome, had reached Moscow on June 7. No wonder, after greeting him, the first thing his hosts said to him was that he must be "tired" after such a long journey. "Not at all" was his answer.

These and other similar episodes — such as the surge of crowds at Samarkand making it impossible for the honoured guest to visit the mausoleum of Tamerlane — were reported in vivid and elaborate detail. One enthusiastic member of the Prime Minister's "press party" (there was no media then) even reported that banners all across the Soviet Union were announcing how "happy" the Russians were to welcome the Indian leader except that they had wrongly spelt the word happy. What had confused the report's author was that Nehru in Cyrillic script becomes "HEPY". However, very little was published then — or during the subsequent decades, for that matter — about the content of the extraordinarily prolonged talks between him and the Soviet leaders.

For this the journalists must not be blamed. Both the Governments were tightlipped about these discussions. The first time the Indian minutes of the several rounds of conversations became public — in the 29th volume of the second series of Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru — was in 2001. But few took any notice of them because these were deemed to be "too dated" — an assumption totally belied by re-reading these documents even today.

What Nehru and the Soviet leaders said to each other retains some resonance even though the Soviet Union is no more and the international ambience has changed hugely and dramatically. The problem at that time, as practically all through the Cold War, was one of war and peace. All eyes were fixed on the Four Power Summit due to take place at Geneva nearly a month after the completion of Nehru's visit to the Soviet Union. He and his hosts fretted for hours over the continuance of the East-West tensions and America's suspicions of the Soviet Union in spite of several reassuring developments such as the "Soviet disarmament proposals, the Austrian peace treaty, the changed Soviet attitude towards Yugoslavia and the Soviet invitation to Chancellor Adenauer of West Germany." The Soviet view was that John Foster Dulles was the villain of the piece. Nehru said that there were "other voices" in the United States and that even Eisenhower did not fully share the views of Dulles. Moreover, West European allies thought differently from the Americans.

Interestingly, Bulganin and other Soviet leaders mentioned Stalin's name once or twice, along with Lenin's, though de-Stalinisation was only eight months away. Equally remarkably, Nikita Khrushchev left it to Bulganin to lead the discussions with Nehru until he appeared at most important session on June 21 and left no doubt about who was calling the shots at the Kremlin.

Most remarkably, Nehru informed his hosts: "Some people in the USA have suggested that India should replace China in the Security Council. This is to create trouble between us and China. We are, of course, wholly opposed to it ... If India is to be admitted to the Security Council, it raises the question of the revision of the Charter of the U.N. We feel this should not be done until the question of China's admission and possibly of others is first solved." Bulganin agreed that it was not the time to amend the U.N. Charter. This should silence those habitual Nehru-baiters who, apart from blaming him for much else, accuse Nehru of having "deprived" India of a permanent seat in the Security Council.

Tailpiece

In the midst of Nehru's talks with the Soviet leaders, Marshal Voroshilov told him to give up smoking because "it is bad for health." Nehru thanked him but did not heed the advice.

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