As late as the 1980s, official foreign visits by heads of government lasted several days. This was especially the case with top-level visits between India and the Soviet Union. In March 1985, when Rajiv Gandhi went to Moscow for the funeral of Konstantin Chernenko, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, he met the leader’s successor Mikhail Gorbachev and agreed to return to the country on a state visit. This would be his first state visit as prime minister.
The trip, planned for the third week of May, when Delhi was relatively hot and Soviet republics experienced pleasant weather, included visits to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic – now Belarus – as well as the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic.
On this visit, Rajiv Gandhi was joined by his wife and children, all of whom seemed to attract the attention of the Soviet press and citizens alike.
As expected, the visit began in Moscow. “I am here to continue the traditions set for us by Jawaharlal Nehru and practised by successive governments in India of sharing assessments and perceptions so that our two countries can work together for a better world,” Gandhi said when he arrived in the Soviet capital.
“With a phalanx of motorcycles leading the way, Gandhi’s motorcade swept through cordoned Moscow streets,” the newswire Associated Press said.
Talks held between Gandhi and Gorbachev resulted in the Soviet Union providing India a credit line in roubles worth $1.15 billion. The loan was given for the purchase of Soviet industrial products until the year 2000. This credit line and the exact rupee-rouble debt were a bone of contention between Moscow and New Delhi after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Indian prime minister’s next destination was Minsk.
Warm welcome
The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, or BSSR, one of the founding members of the Soviet Union, was chosen for a visit by the Indian government. The republic suffered immense destruction at the hands of Nazi Germany in the Second World War and the sacrifices made by the Belarusians in the war were remembered and honoured by the Soviet Union.
As soon as the visit and the itinerary of the Indian prime minister were confirmed, the authorities in BSSR’s capital Minsk went into overdrive to welcome Gandhi and his family, who were accompanied by officials and journalists.
At the tarmac of the Minsk-2 Airport, a guard of honour was lined up, a red carpet was laid out, the Indian Tricolour and Soviet hammer and sickle were raised, and an orchestra arranged to play the two national anthems. The republic’s president Ivan Polyakov and premier Vladimir Brovikov were at the airport to welcome Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, who were being flown in on a Soviet aircraft.
Nikolai Semiletnikov, who later worked as a senior lecturer at the Department of International Relations at the Belarusian Presidential Academy of Management, was witness to the planned ceremonies.
“There was a heavy downpour that began ten minutes before the Indian delegation’s plane landed,” Semiletnikov said in an email interview. “The carpet was swimming in puddles, the flags were turned into wet rags and the orchestra was unable to play any music.”
This was obviously not the start the Belarusians wanted and they were nervous about upsetting their Indian visitors. The ceremonies were shifted to the city centre and held when Rajiv Gandhi visited Minsk’s Victory Monument to lay a wreath in honour those who fought in the Second World War (or the Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Russia and Belarus).
The prime minister and his family were taken to a government guest house near the Zaslawskaye Reservoir, which is popularly known as the Minsk Sea.
The Belarusians wanted to take 15-year-old Rahul Gandhi and 13-year-old Priyanka Gandhi to a children’s park outside the city with forests and lakes called Zubrionok, but their father was apparently against the idea. Instead, the teenagers were given fishing rods, buckets and bait, and taken to the reservoir by security personnel to try their luck at fishing. When Rajiv Gandhi got back, he was surprised to see them with a bucket full of carp.
For some reason, the Belarusian hosts assumed the Indian prime minister was annoyed with his children. Semiletnikov says the hosts somehow got the impression that Indians were prohibited from catching more than a small quantity of fish at a time. This was obviously a case of a conversation lost in translation.
While her husband was holding talks with the highest officials in Minsk, Sonia Gandhi addressed students at the Minsk State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages.
Provincial sightseeing
On his first day in the BSSR, Rajiv Gandhi also visited Khatyn, a village near Minsk where 149 people were massacred in 1943 by the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 118, which mostly consisted of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators.
“The Khatyn memorial has a strong cultural impact and evokes deep feelings among all who have visited it,” Rajiv Gandhi wrote in the guestbook. “Several hardships were inflicted on the people of Minsk and Byelorussia, leading to suffering in a place of well-defined ideals.”
Reflecting on the massacre that took place 42 years earlier, Gandhi added, “May this serve as a warning to all those who are responsible for unleashing the outbreak of war, given that today its consequences would be much more deplorable.”
The Indian prime minister also visited the Byelorussian Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War. Nazi Germany occupied modern-day Belarus from 1941 to 1944. During this time, over a million homes and an estimated 9,200 villages were destroyed. Three million people from Belarus died in the war.
“The family of Soviet people, including the Belarusian people, was so close-knit that everyone feels the fullness of those times,” Rajiv Gandhi wrote in the museum’s guestbook. He also expressed gratitude for “those who stood up for their ideals”.
On his second and final day in Minsk, Rajiv Gandhi was given a tour of the Sergo Ordzhonikidze Computer Factory. The plant was famous across the Soviet Union for its Minsk computers.
The Indian prime minister’s last stop was the Exhibition of the National Economic Achievements of the Byelorussian SSR. “A very interesting exhibition of the achievements of the Byelorussian people,” Gandhi wrote in the guestbook. “It shows the need for development of technology and the production of traditional goods.”
The Indian delegation seemed to like what it saw in Minsk. Semletnikov said foreign visitors were always impressed with the well-planned, clean and broad streets of the Belarusian capital.
The Gandhis flew from Minsk to Frunze (now Bishkek) in the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (now Kyrgyzstan). There, the Gandhi family had a chance to take a boat ride on Issyk Kul Lake in Tian Shan mountains as well as witness a horse show.
The visits to the smaller Soviet republics were termed as “provincial sightseeing” after the success of the Moscow talks, but Gandhi saw them as an outreach to what were then considered regions of the Soviet Union.
Visiting the Soviet Union just weeks before his landmark visit to the United States, the Indian prime minister emphasised the importance that New Delhi gave to its ties with Moscow. “Rajiv Gandhi said the traditional good relations between India and the USSR had good prospects for further development, which met not only the interest of the two peoples but those of universal peace and international security,” the Russian news agency TASS said in a dispatch in May 1985.
The goodwill generated by Rajiv Gandhi’s visit helped pave the way for a sound bilateral relationship between the countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1991, India became one of the first countries to recognise Belarusian independence. A year later, an Indian embassy was opened in Minsk.
Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.
