The Russian Revolution and India

The October Revolution undoubtedly produced a radicalising effect on the Indian situation from the very beginning. At the end of World War I, India was astir with workers' strikes and massive demonstrations against British repression. Peasant unrest was also growing. It was this awakened India, entering the mass phase of its fight for independence, which looked to the Russian Revolution and to its leader Lenin for inspiration and help.They further saw that Lenin and other leaders of Soviet Russia stood for a new social order in which exploitation of man by man is ended, an order based on brotherhood, equality and cooperation of men, and had established a society in which the working class and the toiling people had come into their own and taken over the reins of administration to build socialism.
This volume contains several articles and essays concerning the Indian national movement and the support extended by Russia. In particular,the essays related to the lives of the expatriate Indian revolutionaries in Europe and the meeting of Indian revolutionaries with Lenin are of interest in this volume. The views of Indian national leaders like M.K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, B.G. Tilak among others on Russian Revolution are also included. In short, this volume will be useful to understand the support extended by Russia to the Indian national movement during the first half of the twentieth century.
Please note: This title is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the print edition in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives or Bhutan)

Ilasai Manian is Secretary, Ragunathan Library, Bharati Research Centre, Ettayapuram, Tamilnadu. He is a recognized scholar on studies related to revolutionary nationalist poet Subramania Bharati in Tamilnadu and a prominent Marxist cultural activist from Tamilnadu. V. Rajesh is Assistant Professor in Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali..

Preface 1. India's First Envoys to Revolutionary Russia 2. The Story of a Telegram 3. The First Russian Revolution and India 4. Tilak and the 1905-1907 Revolution in Russia 5. Mahatma Gandhi on the Russian Revolution of 1905 . Non-Violence: Gandhi and Lenin 7. Tolstoy, Gandhi and India 8. Galvanising Impact of the October Revolution on India's National-Liberation Movement 9. Lenin and the Liberation Struggle in India 10. India's Response to Lenin 11. Lenin and the Indian Patriots 12. Lenin and Indian Revolutionaries 13. New Light on Bombay Events of 1908 14. New Light on Old Indian Revolutionary 15. Progressive Indians and Our Country 16. Pioneers of India's Liberation Movement Acclaimed the October Revolution 17. October Revolution and Indian Immigrants in Germany 18. Indian Emigre Revolutionaries in Soviet Russia 19. Bhikaji Rustomji Cama and the Russian Revolutionaries 20. A Russian Revolutionary and His Indian Friends 21. First Mention of Marx in Indian Writings 22. Indian Revolutionaries' Pamphlets in Soviet Libraries 23 A Find in the Archives (Documents About an Unknown Indian Mission to Russia in 1859)