This study has three major objectives. First, it attempts to analyse Soviet economic interests in LDCs in general and India in particular. Earlier attempts to study India's economic relations with the USSR and eastern Europe had focused on the costs and benefits of the relationship to India. The present work started out with the objective of correcting this imbalance. However, this is not intended to be a comprehensive study of Soviet-LDC economic relations; our interest in the latter is limited to the extent that Soviet-LDC economic relations highlight the nature of Indo-Soviet economic relations.

Earlier studies on the subject also ignored or disregarded the importance of geo-political factors in the Indo-Soviet relationship. In the past relations between India and the USSR have been examined either by political scientists or by economists, and both have tended to keep very much within the confines of their disciplines. In the present study we attempt the more hazardous task of examining the interrelationship of the economic and political elements of the relationship. Hence, in part I (which is largely interpretative) we first examine the Soviet contribution to the conception and implementation of India's development strategy; then investigate Soviet economic interests in India; and, finally, examine the mutuality of the geo-political interests of India and the USSR, thereby bringing the ‘economic’ and ‘political’ discussion together at the end of part I.

The second objective of this study has been to go beyond the emphasis in the existing literature on Soviet (and east European) aid to India.