As a country that gained independence after World War II, strengthening its own national defense has always been the focus of India's development. The Soviet Union had sold a large number of weapons to India, but the two countries had a rift. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia continued to routine India in the arms trade, will India not learn its lesson?
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First, the evolution of Soviet-Indian relations has sown the cause and effect of enmity and resentment
We all know that during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union, as the "big brother" of socialist countries, did not have good relations with many capitalist countries, and only a few capitalist countries maintained normal ties with the Soviet Union, including India in South Asia.
In 1953, a year of great political upheaval in the Soviet Union, Stalin died, who had held power in the Soviet Union for 29 years. Ambitious Khrushchev came to power and carried out drastic reforms in order to get out of the Stalinist model. On the question of how to deal with relations with India, Khrushchev also gave his own answer. That is economic aid plus arms support.
As early as stalin's reign, the Soviet side attached great importance to India, and Beleshkov, who had been Stalin's translator for a long time, recorded in his "Memoirs of Stalin's Private Translator" (Stalin himself had such a vision, that is, to go to India to form a government-in-exile after the fall of all The Soviet union.) Stalin was able to come up with such a retreat at a critical time of national crisis, and it was enough to see the importance of India in his heart.
After India's independence in 1947, Stalin attached more and more importance to relations with India, and as a populous country geographically far from the West, it was necessary to establish good relations with India. But in his later years, Stalin was very suspicious and in poor health, and he no longer had so much energy to deal with these things. Fortunately, his successor, Khrushchev, did not ignore India, and Soviet-Indian relations began a new chapter during his reign.
In 1955, Indian Prime Minister Nehru, who had just jointly proposed the "Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence" with Premier Zhou Enlai of our country, was invited by Khrushchev to the Soviet Union. During this meeting, Khrushchev not only actively expressed the Soviet Union's desire for friendly exchanges with India, but also provided India with economic and military assistance of up to 38.49 billion rupees.
Although the early exchanges between the Soviet Union and India were mainly based on economic assistance, what India most wanted from the Soviet Union was weapons and equipment. In particular, aircraft, aircraft carriers and other weapons with strong destructive power but high technical level. At first, the Soviet Union was not concerned about India's arms demands, and more like renting islands to build military bases for India. But with the reforms in the Soviet Union and the deterioration of relations with China, Soviet aid to India gradually shifted from economic to military weapons.
In 1962, India's attempt to buy supersonic fighter jets in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States was again rejected, while the Soviet Union agreed to India's request to buy its own fighter jets. On the one hand, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union had entered a white-hot phase, and the Soviet Union needed a loyal ally to help it; on the other hand, Sino-Soviet relations gradually deteriorated under the influence of Soviet power politics, which hoped to strengthen India's military strength so that it could restrain China in the southwest.
From this period until the collapse of the Soviet Union for decades, the Soviet Union and India maintained close ties, and since the 1980s, India has become one of the most important trading countries of the Soviet Union. In the arms trade, India bought billions of dollars worth of arms from the Soviet Union, making it the country that imported the most Soviet weapons. At a time when India's military spending was tight, the Soviet Union also provided loans to India. The friendly relations between the Soviet Union and India also became a topic that people often mentioned when talking about the Soviet Union later.
But international relations will always change with the change of national interests, which is more evident in India, a country where Soviet aid to India not only did not exchange India's sincerity in the end, but instead received a backstab from this former partner.
With a little attention, we move on.
Second, repeatedly suffer losses, routine India has become a tradition?
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the long-term deformed economic system has not been effectively improved. Yeltsin, then president of Russia, was powerless to change the status quo of the economy and opted for the most convenient "shock therapy." This method of government inaction completely exposed the already fragile Russian market to Western capital, and for a time the Russian currency ruble depreciated sharply, and the economy faced a serious crisis.
India, its former partner, did not help Russia through the difficulties at this time, but fell into the well. As mentioned earlier, the Soviet Union had provided a large number of loans to India, and in 1980 alone, the Soviet Union provided more than a billion dollars in loans to India. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these foreign debts were naturally taken over by Russia, and India rushed to pay off its loans to Russia during this period of devaluation of the ruble. What was once a multibillion-dollar loan, now india pays it off with only a few million dollars, is not a drop in the rock, what is it?
Fortunately, Russia later came out of the trough under the leadership of Putin and gradually regained the vitality of a big country, and the serious economic crisis passed, but the beams with India did not pass. Due to the influence of geographical factors and the international situation, Russia is inconvenient and does not allow it to completely tear its face with India, so Russia has tried its best to make India suffer losses in trade, especially in the arms trade.
Russia's biggest "legacy" from the Soviet Union is the huge weapons and equipment, and to this day, Russia is still a military power second only to the United States. Just as it relied on the Soviet Union, India was also very dependent on importing weapons from Russia. This also gives Russia the opportunity to take revenge on it for its backstabbing.
Not to mention that Russia has exported a large number of old-fashioned weapon parts to India, and in the arms trade of fighters and tanks, Russia has also caught India in a fierce pit. The most famous thing is that Russia sold the Su-27 fighter to India as a Su-30 fighter, and earned maintenance costs after the aircraft broke down; in addition, the old tanks were also forcibly stuffed to India. These are just small fights in Russia's pit India's past. What really makes India uncomfortable, and what suffers a big loss is the aircraft carrier trade between the two countries.
From the super-Japanese aircraft carrier to the Vikramaditya, Russia has taken advantage of India through the aircraft carrier trade. The Vikramaditya alone cost India nearly $2.2 billion. So why is India so obsessed with importing aircraft carriers from Russia, knowing that Russia has bad intentions, and why is it willing to be the wrongdoer? It comes down to India's unrealistic aircraft carrier dream.
Third, one is willing to fight and one is willing to be beaten, where should the development of aircraft carriers go?
On the issue of aircraft carrier trade, Russia and India perfectly explain what is meant by "one willing to fight and one willing to be beaten". It makes sense that Russia has suffered losses from India, and that it has been put on the rocks by India and is now pitting India in turn. But although India is self-inflicted, it is not enough to be pitted once or twice, is it really stupid for India to be pit money by a country for more than ten years? Is your own aircraft carrier dream really that important?
Although India was the first country in Asia to have an aircraft carrier, it did win the war and earn enough face by aircraft carriers, but due to national strength, India's aircraft carriers are very dependent on imports from foreign countries. In 1997, India's former proud aircraft carrier, the USS Vikran, was decommissioned, desperately needing a more powerful carrier to cement its position in the Indian Ocean. In 2004, India negotiated with Russia to take the Vikramaditya.
It was this aircraft carrier that allowed Russia to slaughter India, and Russia received $2.2 billion from India for repairs alone. India, which originally thought it would be available for $900 million, was limited by the backwardness of its own technology and could only be repeatedly increased by Russia. In 2013, India happily received the Vikramaditya, but did not expect to have more painful torture after this.
A fire accident occurred on the Vikramaditya during a sea trial, which disappointed India. How can an aircraft carrier that has waited for 9 years and spent more than 2 billion yuan be like this? But before India could strike, Russia took the lead in saying that this aircraft carrier has been repaired for too long, and if India is not at ease, it will add some repair costs, and we will make up for it. In the face of Russia's behavior, India has no way, who said that it fell into the stone, and its technical level is not in place?
Today's India, instead of struggling with how much money russia has pit, it is better to put aside the unrealistic dream of an aircraft carrier for the time being and study technology to develop the economy with peace of mind. As the world's second most populous country, India should have enough potential to become a big country and a great power in the future. But the premise of all this is still to recognize ourselves, and history has long proved to us that it is impossible to be ambitious and eager to achieve success, and only by accumulating ourselves in a down-to-earth manner and having the ability to grasp the opportunity when it comes can we achieve success.