Early Contact of Indians with Soviet Russia and the Spread of Communist Ideas Among Indians

Abstract

By the turn of the nineteenth century, several Indians devised plans for liberating their homeland through armed struggle. To bring their radical aspiration to fruition, such revolutionaries found it necessary to leave India. During the First World War, they assembled in anti-British hubs such as Berlin and Istanbul. Later, many sought refuges in Afghanistan during and following the War, but substantial support for their cause proved elusive even there in Kabul. Finally, some of these revolutionaries managed to reach Russia after knowing that Soviet Russia had become a focal point for anti-imperialist movements after the Great October Revolution (1917). The first Indians went to Soviet Russia, intending to seek support from the Bolsheviks as early as February 1918. The Bolsheviks took these Indian revolutionaries under their wing and provided them with training and organization. It was in Tashkent that the first Communist Party of India was established in 1920. The Soviet-trained Indian Marxists returned to their home country in 1922, where they were apprehended and subsequently imprisoned by the British government and sentenced to imprisonment. After release from jail, they re-established the Communist Party of India on Indian soil.