after digging deeper and reaching the illegal parts of Google, finding some illegal websites that I did not open or get close to whatsoever I found a LEGAL website with pages and information of chapter 18 of Mitrokhin Archives 2

let's dive into this

A brief visit to India by Henry Kissinger in October 1974 provided another opportunity for a KGB active-measures campaign. Agents of influence were given further fabricated stories about CIA con¬spiracies to report to the Prime Minister and other leading figures in the government and parliament. The KGB claimed to have planted over seventy stories in the Indian press condemning CIA subversion as well as initiating letter-writing and poster campaigns. The Delhi main residency claimed that, thanks to its campaign, Mrs. Gandhi had raised the question of CIA operations in India during her talks with Kissinger.

On 28 April 1975 Andropov approved a further Indian active-measures operation to publicize fabricated evidence of CIA subver¬sion. Sixteen packets containing incriminating material prepared by Service A on three CIA officers stationed under diplomatic cover at the US embassy were sent anonymously by the Delhi residency to the media and gave rise to a series of articles in the Indian press. According to KGB files, Mrs. Gandhi sent a personal letter to the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, enclosing some of the KGB's forged CIA documents and a series of articles in Indian newspapers which had been taken in by them. The same files report that Mrs. Bandaranaike concluded that CIA subversion posed such a serious threat to Sri Lanka that she set up a committee of investigation.

One of Mrs. Gandhi's critics, Piloo Moody, ridiculed her obsession with CIA subversion by wearing around his neck a medallion with the slogan, ‘I am a CIA agent'.84 For Mrs. Gandhi, however, the Agency was no laughing matter. By the summer of 1975 her suspicions of a vast conspiracy by her political opponents, aided and abetted by the CIA, had, in the opinion of her biographer Katherine Frank, grown to 'something close to paranoia'. Her mood was further darkened on 12 June by a decision of the Allahabad High Court, against which she appealed, invalidating her election as MP

on the grounds of irregularities in the 1971 elections. A fortnight later she persuaded both the President and the cabinet to agree to the declaration of a state of emergency. In a broadcast to the nation on India Radio on 26 June, Mrs. Gandhi declared that a 'deep and widespread conspiracy' had been brewing ever since 1 began to introduce certain progressive measures of benefit to the common man and woman of India'. Opposition leaders were jailed or put under house arrest and media censorship introduced. In the first year of the emergency, according to Amnesty International, more than 1,10,000 people were arrested and detained without trial.

Reports from the New Delhi main residency, headed from 1975 to 1977 by Leonid Shebarshin, claimed (probably greatly exaggerated) credit for using its agents of influence to persuade Mrs. Gandhi to declare the emergency.86 The CPI Central Executive Committee voiced its 'firm opinion that the swift and stern measures taken by the Prime Minister and the government of India against the right-reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces were necessary and justified. Any weakness displayed at this critical moment would have been fatal. Predictably, it accused the CIA of supporting the counter-revolutionary conspiracy.87 KGB active measures adopted the same line.88 The assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and much of his family in Bangladesh on 14 August further fuelled Mrs. Gandhi's conspiracy theories. Behind their murders she saw once again the hidden hand of the CIA.

According to Shebarshin, both the Centre and the Soviet leader¬ship found it difficult to grasp that the emergency had not turned Indira Gandhi into a dictator and that she still responded to public opinion and had to deal with opposition: 4On the spot, from close up, the embassy and our [intelligence] service saw all this, but for Moscow “Indira became India, and India - Indira." Reports from the New Delhi residency which were critical of any aspect of her policies received a cool reception in the Centre. Shebarshin thought it unlikely that any were forwarded to Soviet leaders or the Central Committee. Though Mrs. Gandhi was fond of saying in private that states have no constant friends and enemies, only constant interests, "At times Moscow behaved as though India had given a pledge of love and loyalty to her Soviet friends. Even the slightest hiccup in relations caused consternation.90 During 1975 a total of 10.6 million rubles was spent on active measures in India designed to strengthen

support for Mrs. Gandhi and undermine her political opponents.91 Soviet backing was public as well as covert. In June 1976, at a time when Mrs. Gandhi suffered from semi-pariah status in most of the West, she was given a hero's welcome during a trip to the Soviet Union. On the eve of her arrival a selection of her speeches, articles and interviews was published in Russian translation.92 She attended meetings in her honour in cities across the Soviet Union.93 The visit ended, as it had begun, in a mood of mutual self-congratulation.

The Kremlin, however, was worried by reports of the dismissive attitude to the Soviet Union of Indira's son and anointed heir, Sanjay, an admirer of Ferdinand Marcos, the corrupt anti-Communist Presi¬dent of the Philippines.94 Reports reached P. N. Dhar (and, almost certainly, the New Delhi main residency) that one of Sanjay's cronies was holding regular meetings with a US embassy official ‘in a very suspicious manner'. Soon after his mother's return from her trium¬phal tour of the Soviet Union, Sanjay gave an interview in which he praised big business, denounced nationalization and poured scorn on the Communists. Probably annoyed by complaints of his own corruption, he said of the CPI, I don't think you'd find a richer or more corrupt people anywhere. By her own admission, Indira became 'quite frantic' when his comments were made public, telling Dhar that her son had 'grievously hurt' the CPI and 'created serious problems with the entire Soviet bloc. Sanjay was persuaded to issue a 'clarification' which fell well short of a retraction.

The emergency ended as suddenly as it had begun. On 18 January 1977 Mrs. Gandhi announced that elections would be held in March. Press censorship was suspended and opposition leaders released from house arrest. The New Delhi main residency, like Mrs. Gandhi, was overconfident about the outcome at the election. To ensure suc¬cess it mounted a major operation, codenamed KASKAD, involving over 120 meetings with agents during the election campaign. Nine of the Congress (R) candidates at the elections were KGB agents.96 Files noted by Mitrokhin also identify by name twenty-one of the non-Communist politicians (four of them ministers) whose election campaigns were subsidized by the KGB.97 The Soviet media called for 'unity of action of all the democratic forces and particularly the ruling Indian National Congress and the Communist Party of India.98 Repeated pressure was put on the CPI leadership by both New Delhi main residency and Moscow to ensure its support

for Mrs. Gandhi. The CPI General Secretary, Rajeshwar Rao, and the Secretary of the Party's National Council, N. K. Krishna, were summoned to the Soviet embassy on 12 February to receive a mes¬sage of exhortation from the CPSU Central Committee. Further exhortations were delivered in person on 15 February by a three-man Soviet delegation. KGB files report Rao and Krishna as saying that they greatly appreciated the advice of their Soviet colleagues and were steadfast in their support for Mrs. Gandhi.99 Their appreciation also reflected the unusually high level of Soviet subsidies during the CPI election campaign-over 3 million rupees in the first two months of 1977.

Agent reports reinforced the New Delhi main residency's confi¬dence that Indira Gandhi would secure another election victory. Reports that she faced the possibility of defeat in her constituency were largely disregarded.101 In the event Mrs. Gandhi suffered a crushing defeat, Janata, the newly united non-Communist oppo¬sition, won 40 per cent of the vote to Congress (R)’s 35 per cent. One of the KGB's betes noires, Morarji Desai, became Prime Minis¬ter. When the election result was announced, writes Mrs. Gandhi's biographer, Katherine Frank, 'India rejoiced as it had not done since the eve of independence from the British thirty years before. In Delhi, Mrs. Gandhi's downfall was celebrated with dancing in the streets

The result of the Indian elections of March 1977 caused shock and consternation in both the Centre and the New Delhi main residency. Leonid Shebarshin, the main resident, was hurriedly recalled to Moscow for consultations.' As well as fearing the political consequence of Mrs. Gandhi’s defeat, the Centre was also embarrassed by the way the election demonstrated to the Soviet leadership the limitations of its much-vaunted active-measures campaigns and its supposed ability to manipulate Indian politics. The FCD report on its intelligence failure was largely an exercise in self-justification. It stressed that an election victory by Mrs. Gandhi had also been widely predicted by both Western and Indian observers (including the Indian intelligence community), many of whom had made even greater errors than itself. The report went on to explain the FCD's own mistakes by claiming that the extreme diversity of the huge Indian electorate and the many divisions along family, caste, ethnic, religious, class and party lines made accurate prediction of voting behavior almost impossible. This was plainly special pleading. The Complexities of Indian politics could not provide a credible expla¬nation for the failure by the KGB (and other observers) to compre¬hend the collapse of support for Mrs. Gandhi in the entire Hindi belt, the traditional Congress stronghold, where it won only two seats, and its reduction to a regional party of South India, where it remained in control

The FCD also argued, in its own defense, that Mrs. Gandhi's previous determination to hold on to power had made it reasonable to expect that she would refuse to surrender it in March 1977, and would be prepared if necessary either to fix the election results or to declare them null and void (as, it alleged, Sanjay's cronies were urging). Indeed the FCD claimed that on 20 March, when the results

were announced, Mrs. Gandhi had tried to prevent the Janata Party taking power but had been insufficiently decisive and failed to get the backing of the army high command. There was no substance to these claims, which probably originated in the Delhi rumour mill then working overtime, and were passed on to the KGB by its large network of agents and confidential contacts. Contrary to reports to Moscow from the New Delhi main residency, the transfer of power after the election was swift and orderly. In the early hours of 21 March Mrs. Gandhi summoned a short and perfunctory cabinet meeting, where she read out her letter of resignation, which was approved by the cabinet with only minor changes. At 4 am, she was driven to the home of the acting President, B. D. Jatti, and submitted her resignation. Jatti was so taken aback that, until prompted by Dhar, he forgot to ask Mrs. Gandhi to stay on as acting Prime Minister until the formation of the next government.

The tone of the Soviet media changed immediately after the Indian election. It blamed the defeat of Mrs. Gandhi, hitherto virtually free from public criticism, on 'mistakes and excesses’ by her government. Seeking to exempt the CPI from blame, a commentator in Izvestia claimed, 'It is indicative that Congress Party candidates were most successful in places where a pre-election arrangement existed between the Congress and the Communist Party of India, or where the Communist Party, with no official encouragement, actively sup¬ported progressive candidates of the Congress Party’. In reality the election was a disaster for the CPI as well as for Congress. Dragged down by the unpopularity of the Indira Gandhi regime, it lost all but seven of the twenty-five seats it had won in 1971, while its rival, the breakaway Communist Party of India, Marxist (CPM), won twenty-two. The Centre responded cautiously to the landslide vic¬tory of a CPM-led coalition in state elections in West Bengal in June 1977. Though Andropov was eager to set up covert communications with the new state government, he was anxious not to offend the CPI. It was therefore agreed after discussions between Shebarshin (recently promoted to become deputy head of the FCD Seventeenth Department) and a senior CPSU official that, though KGB officers could make contact with CPM leaders, they must claim to be doing so on a purely personal basis. According to FCD files, 'important information' about CPM policy was obtained by the Delhi main residency from its contacts with Party leaders.

The KGB's main priority during the early months of the Janata government was damage limitation. In the course of the campaign Morarji Desai had charged Mrs. Gandhi with doing 'whatever the Soviet Union does' and declared that, under a Janata government, the Indo-Soviet treaty might 'automatically go'. The Centre feared 4a reinforcement of reactionary anti-Soviet forces'.6 On 24 March the Politburo approved an FCD directive 'On measures in connec¬tion with the results of the parliamentary elections in India*, whose main objectives were to preserve the Friendship Treaty and to deter Janata from seeking a rapprochement with the United States and China.7 Though the Desai government did set out to improve re¬lations with the United States and China, the Indo-Soviet treaty survived. A joint communiqué after a visit by Gromyko to New Delhi in April committed both countries to ‘the further strengthening of equal and mutually beneficial co-operation in the spirit of the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Co-operation'. In August the Politburo approved a directive on KGB active measures entitled 'On measures to influence the ruling circles of India in new conditions to the advantage of the USSR'.9
The 'new conditions’ of Janata rule made active-measures cam¬paigns more difficult than before. Articles planted by the KGB in the Indian press declined sharply from 1,980 in 1976 to 411 in 1977.m The Centre, however, continued to make exaggerated claims for the success of its active measures in making the Janata govern¬ment suspicious of American and Chinese policy.11 The New Delhi main residency also claimed in June 1978 that it had succeeded in discrediting the Home Minister, Charan Singh, Indira Gandhi's most outspoken opponent in the Janata government, and forcing his dis¬missal.12 In reality, Singh's dismissal was due to the fact that he had accused Desai and other ministers of being 'a collection of impotent men' because of their failure to bring Mrs. Gandhi to trial.11 He was later to return to the government and briefly succeeded Desai as Prime Minister in the later months of 1979.

The March 1977 KGB directive approved by the Politburo had in¬structed the Delhi main residency to 'influence Mrs. Gandhi to renew the Indian National Congress on a democratic (left-wing] basis'. In order not to offend the Janata government, the Soviet embassy was wary of maintaining official contact with Mrs. Gandhi after her election defeat.14 Instead, the Delhi main residency re-established covert

contact with her through an operations officer, Viktor Nikolayevicli Cherepakhin (codenamed VLADI.EN), operating under cover as a Trud correspondent, though there is no evidence that she realized he was from the KGB. The residency also set up an active-measures fund codenamed DEPO in an attempt to buy influence within the Committee for Democratic Action founded by Mrs. Gandhi and some of her supporters in May 1977. Though there is no evidence that Mrs. Gandhi knew of its existence, the fund had available in July 275,000 convertible rubles.1 On New Year's Day 1978 Mrs. Gandhi instigated a second split in the Congress Party. She and her followers, the majority of the party, reconstituted themselves as Congress (I) - I for Indira. Though she eventually admitted that things 'did get a little out of hand’ during the emergency, she con¬tinued to insist that Janata's election victory owed much to ‘foreign help’. The movement against us, she declared, 'was engineered by outside forces’.10 As usual, Mrs. Gandhi doubtless had the CIA in mind.

Janata's fragile unity, which had been made possible during the 1977 election campaign only by common hostility to Indira Gandhi, failed to survive the experience of government. At the general elec¬tion in January 1980 Congress (I) won 351 of the 542 seats. 'It's Indira All The Way’, declared the headline in the ‘Times of India’. Soon after her election victory, Mrs. Gandhi tried to renew contact with Cherepakhin, only to discover that he had been recalled to Moscow.17 While welcoming Mrs. Gandhi's return to power, the Centre was apprehensive about the future. The power of Sanjay whom it strongly distrusted, was at its zenith, his role as heir appar¬ent appeared unassailable, and - despite the presence, unknown to Sanjay, of an agent codenamed PURI in his entourage.18 - the KGB seems to have discovered no significant means of influence over him. Though Sanjay's death in an air crash in June 1980 left Mrs. Gandhi distraught, it was doubtless welcomed in the Centre.

Mrs. Gandhi's relations with Moscow in the early 1980s never quite recaptured the warmth of her previous term in office. She particularly resented the fact that she could no longer count on the support of the CP1. During Brezhnev's state visit to India in December 1980, she said pointedly at a reception in his honour ‘Understandably, we face an onslaught from the "right" and, not so understandably, from the "left".’ 19 According to KGB reports, some

of the CP1 attacks were personal. Indian Communist leaders spread rumours that Mrs. Gandhi was taking bribes both from state minis¬ters and from the French suppliers of the Mirage fighters which she decided to purchase for the Indian air force. During visits to India by both Brezhnev and the Soviet Defense Minister, Marshal Ustinov, she asked for Soviet pressure to bring the CPI into line.20 When the pressure failed to materialize, Mrs. Gandhi took her revenge. In May 1981 she set up a new Congress (I)-sponsored association, the Friends of the Soviet Union, as a rival to the CPl-sponsored Indo-Soviet Cultural Society - declaring that the time had come to liberate Indo-Soviet friendship from those who had set themselves up as its 'custodians'. It was, she said, the 'professional friends and foes of the Soviet Union who created problems for us'. She also set up a ‘World peace and solidarity' organization to break the monopoly of the World Peace Council, headed by an Indian Communist and much used as a vehicle for Soviet active measures.

Moscow's failure to bring the CPI into line however, continued to rankle with Mrs. Gandhi. In June 1983 she sent a secret letter to the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, attacking the CPI for having 'ganged up’ against her with right-wing reactionaries. The letter was entrusted to Yogendra Sharma, a member of the Parry Politburo who disagreed with Rajeshwar Rao's opposition to Mrs. Gandhi. Once in Moscow, however Sharma had second thoughts and 'confessed all' to a Party comrade. When the story was made public in India, Indira's critics accused her of 'inviting Soviet interference in India's internal affairs'. Mrs. Gandhi refused to comment.22 Though somewhat tar¬nished, however, the Indo-Soviet special relationship survived. When Mrs. Gandhi visited Moscow for Brezhnev's funeral she was the first non-Communist leader to be received by Yuri Andropov

The KGB continued to make large claims for the success of its active measures. When the Indian government refused in July 1981 to give an entry visa to an American diplomat named Griffin, who was due to take up a post as political counselor at the US embassy, the KGB claimed that the decision was due to its success over the previous six months in linking him with the CIA. Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of the FCD, reported to the Politburo.

According to information received, the initiative in making this decision came from Indira Gandhi herself, A significant role was also played by anti-American articles which we inspired in the Indian and foreign press which cited various sources to expose the dangerous nature of the CIA's subversive operations in India. Attempts by representatives of the USA and of the American press to justify the methods and to pretend that Griffin had been the victim of a Soviet 'disinformation' campaign were decisively rejected by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Narasirnha Rao, who stated that this action was taken independently and was in no way prompted by another country

The greatest successes of Soviet active measures in India remained the exploitation of the susceptibility of Indira Gandhi and her advisers to bogus CIA conspiracies against them. In March 1980 Home Minister Zail Singh blamed the USA and China for fomenting unrest in Assam and the tribal areas of the north-east. Shortly after¬wards Home Ministry officials claimed to have 'definite information1 that the CIA was 'pumping money’ into the region through Christian missionaries. Mrs. Gandhi herself repeatedly referred to the 'foreign hand' behind this and other outbreaks of domestic unrest. Though she rarely identified the 'foreign hand' in public, it was clear that she meant the CIA

One of the main aims of KGB active measures in the early 1980s was to manufacture evidence that the CIA and Pakistani intelligence were behind the growth of Sikh separatism in the Punjab.26 In the autumn of 1981 Service A launched operation KONTAKT based on a forged document purporting to contain details of the weapons and money provided by Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to the militants seeking to bring about the creation of an independent Sikh state of Khalistan. In November the forgery was passed to a senior Indian diplomat in Islamabad. Shortly afterwards the Islamabad residency reported to the Centre that, according to (possibly optimis¬tic) agents' reports, the level of anxiety in the Indian embassy about Pakistani support for Sikh separatists indicated that KONTAKT was having the alarmist effect that Service A had hoped for.

In the spring of 1982 the New Delhi residency reported that Agent "S1 (apparently a recent recruit) had direct access to Mrs. Gandhi and had personally presented to her another forged ISI document fabricated by Service A, which purported to demonstrate Pakistani involvement in the Khalistan conspiracy.27 Though there is no con¬vincing evidence that Agent ‘S’ or the forgeries channeled through

him had any significant influence on Mrs. Gandhi, the Centre suc¬cumbed to one of its recurrent bouts of wishful thinking about its ability to manipulate Indian policy. On 5 May it congratulated the recently installed main resident, Alcksandr losifovich Lysenko (codenamed BOGDAN), on the supposed success of Agent'S'28 and informed him that the Centre proposed to use 'S' as a major channel for feeding future disinformation to Mrs. Gandhi. Before the agent's meeting with Mrs. Gandhi, the Centre sent the following detailed instructions:
(A)
(B) (A) During meetings [with 'S'], acquaint the agent with the contents of the |latest forged] document and show interest in his opinion regarding the importance and relevance of the information contained in it for the Indian authorities. Also it should be explained to the agent that the document is genuine, obtained by us through secret channels.
(C)
(D) (B) Work out a derailed story of how ‘S’ obtained the document. (This will involve organizing a short trip to Pakistan for the agent,)
(E)
(F) (C) Inform ‘S' that, in accordance with the terms laid down by the source [of the document] he must not leave the document with VANO |Mrs. Gandhi]- Recommend to the agent that he acts in the following way in order not to arouse a negative reaction in VANO, If VANO insists that the document is left with her, then 'S’ should leave a previously prepared copy of the document, without the headings which would indicate its origin. Instruct ‘S’ to observe VANO’s reaction to the document.
(G)
(H) (D) Point out to the agent that it is essential that he builds on his conver¬sation with VANO in order that he can drop hints on what she can expect from ‘S’ in the future and what information would be of special interest to her.

‘S’ reported that he had shown the document to Mrs. Gandhi on May 1982. The fact that she did not ask for a copy suggests that she did not attach much significance to it. The KGB, however, preferred to credit the self-serving claims made by ‘S' about his supposed influence on the Prime Minister.

Shortly after succeeding Brezhnev as Soviet leader in November 1982 Yuri Andropov approved a proposal by Kryuchkov to fabri¬cate a further Pakistani intelligence document detailing ISI plans to ferment religious disturbances in Punjab and promote the creation of Khalistan as an independent Sikh stare. The Centre believed that the Indian ambassador in Pakistan, to whom this forgery was sent would consider it so important that he was hound to forward it to Mrs. Gandhi,30 The KGB appeared by now supremely confident that it could continue to deceive her indefinitely with fabricated reports of CIA and Pakistani conspiracies against her.

(please keep in mind that Khalistan is a sikh extremist group, and we Sikhs no longer support it. And I absolutely hate Khalistan)

Mrs. Gandhi's importance as one of the Third World's most influ¬ential leaders was further enhanced, in Moscow's eyes, by her elec¬tion as Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement in succession to Fidel Castro. The Indian press published photographs of a beaming Castro embracing her in a bear hug as he handed over to her in March 1983 at the seventh summit of the Movement in Delhi. On the eve of the summit the Delhi main residency succeeded in planting in the Indian press a forged secret memorandum in the name of the US representa¬tive at the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatriek, which gave further bogus details of American plans to foster divisions in the Third World and undermine Indian influence.11 Under Mrs. Gandhi’s chair¬manship, the Non-Aligned summit devoted little time to the war in Afghanistan and concentrated instead on issues of disarmament and economic development, which offered ample scope for attacks on the United States. The post-summit communiqué condemned the United States fifteen times; the Soviet Union, by contrast, was only once bracketed with the United States as sharing responsibility for the arms race. Moscow was predictably delighted. Pravda declared that ‘the Non-Aligned Movement has displayed devotion to its basic principles of struggle against imperialism, colonialism, racism and war

The next stage in the Soviet cultivation of the Gandhi dynasty was the visit to Moscow in July 1983 by Indira's elder son, Rajiv, who had reluctantly entered politics at his mother's insistence after Sanjay's death and was being groomed by her for the succession. The high-level meetings and glittering receptions laid on for Rajiv showed, according to one Indian observer, that he had been 'virtually anointed by the Soviet commissars as the unquestioned successor to Mrs. Gandhi’. During his visit Rajiv was plainly persuaded by his hosts that the CIA was engaged in serious subversion in the Punjab, where Sikh separatism now posed the most serious challenge to Congress government. He declared on his return that there 'definite interference from the USA in the Punjab situation'

In early June 1984 Mrs. Gandhi sent troops into the Punjab where they stormed the Sikh holy of holies, the Golden Temple at Amritsar. The Soviet Union, like the CPI, quickly expressed 'full understanding of the steps taken by the Indian government to curb terrorism’. Once again, Mrs. Gandhi took seriously Soviet claims of secret CIA support for the Sikhs.34 A KGB active measure also fabricated evi¬dence that Pakistani intelligence was planning to recruit Afghan refugees to assassinate her.35 Though Mrs. Gandhi, thanks largely to the KGB, exaggerated the threat from the United States and ****¬stan, she tragically underestimated the threat from the Sikhs in her own bodyguard, countermanding as a matter of principle an order from the head of the IB that they be transferred to other duties. India, she bravely insisted, ‘was secular’. One of the principles by which she had lived was soon to cost her, her life. On 31 October she was shot dead by two Sikh guards in the garden of her house.36 Predictably, some conspiracy theorists were later to argue that the guards had been working for the CIA.37 Though the Centre probably did not originate this conspiracy theory, attempting to implicate the Agency in the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi became one of the chief priorities of KGB active measures in India over the next few years

Rajiv Gandhi's first foreign visit after succeeding his mother as Prime Minister was to the Soviet Union for the funeral of Konstantin Chcmenko in March 1985, He and Chernenko's successor, Mikhail Gorbachev, established an immediate rapport, which was reinforced during Rajiv's first official visit two months later. The KGB, mean¬while, pursued active-measures operations designed to persuade Rajiv that the CIA was plotting against him. Its fabrications, how¬ever, which included a forged letter in 1987 from the DCI, William Casey, on plans for his overthrow,34 seem to have had little effect. The personal friendship between Rajiv and Gorbachev could not disguise the declining importance of the Indian special relationship for the Soviet Union. Part of Gorbachev's 'new thinking' in foreign policy was the attempt to extricate the Soviet Union from India's disputes with China and Pakistan. At a press conference during his visit to India in November 1986, Gorbachev was much more equivocal than his predecessors about Soviet support in a military conflict between India and China. The winding down of the cold war also greatly decreased the usefulness of India as an arena for KGB active measures. One of the most successful active measures during Gorbachev's first two years in power were the attempt to blame Aids on American biological warfare. The story originated on US Independence Day 1984 in an article published in the Indian newspaper Patriot, alleging that the Aids virus had been 'manufactured' during genetic engineering experiments at Fort Derrick, Maryland. In the first six months of 1987 alone the story received major media coverage in over forty Third World countries. Faced with American protests and the denunciation of the story by the international scientific community, however, Gorbachev and his advisers were clearly concerned that exposure of Soviet disinformation might damage the new Soviet image in the West. In August 1987 US officials were told in Moscow that the Aids story was officially disowned. Soviet press coverage of the story came to an almost complete halt.41 In the era of glasnost, Moscow also regarded the front organizations as a rapidly declining asset. In 1986 Romesh Chandra, the Indian Communist President of the most important of them, the World Peace Council, felt obliged to indulge in self-criticism. ‘The criticisms made of the President's work', he acknowledged, 'require to be heeded and necessary correc¬tions made.’ The main "correction" which followed was his own replacement

Rajiv Gandhi lost power in India at elections late in 1989 just as the Soviet bloc was beginning to disintegrate. New Delhi was wrong-footed by the final collapse of the Soviet Union two years later. On the outbreak of the hard-line coup in Moscow of August 1991 which attempted to overthrow Gorbachev, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao declared that it might serve as a warning to those who attempted change too rapidly. Following the collapse of the coup a few days later, Rao's statement was held against him by both Gorbachev and Yeltsin. When Gorbachev rang world leaders after his release from house arrest in the Crimea, he made no attempt to contact Rao. The Indian ambassador did not attend the briefing given by Yeltsin to senior members of the Moscow diplomatic corps after the coup collapsed.43 The Indo-Soviet special relationship, to which the KGB had devoted so much of its energies for most of the Cold War, was at an end.

and there ya go

I can really write some long detailed documentaries huh, well uts like a talent of mine lmao

and this is a 5474 word long written documentary