Mission from Moscow: Soviet Advisers and the Second Indian Five-Year Plan

Abstract

The article examines some early Soviet contacts with Indian planners to show effects on economists and economic ideas in both countries. Using documents from Soviet and Indian archives, this article traces effects of Soviet advisors working with the Indian Planning Commission at the crucial moment of formulating India’s Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61). It shows how Soviet economists, most notably M. I. Rubinshtein, were part of an official effort to shape the direction of Indian economic policy — but also how Indian planners like P. C. Mahalanobis were able to use foreign visitors for support. It also suggests ways that the advising relationships in India may have had more effect on Soviet views of the Third World than on Indian plans. Mahalanobis’s enthusiasm for importing planning helped him build a technical edifice for his vision of Indian economic policy and to build domestic support for it. For the Soviets, meanwhile, the encounter with India contributed to a reimaging of the developing world. Rubinshtein’s travel to and studies of India, then, accelerated the broader Soviet reconsideration of the non-capitalist path, and with it a core element of Soviet eschatology. There was still one ultimate destination for history — Communism — but there was, theoretically at least, more than one way to get there.