all this talk on what india is without russia and all the thing is we considered you as friend not foes
when u.s.s.r was indulging in infra project india provided foodgrain and agricultural support
soft power :
u.s.s.r liked indian culture and you know someone like raj kapoor was immensdely popular there
http://indianeconomy.org/2007/09/24/russias-rouble-advantage/
Despite India’s oft-proclaimed Non-aligned status in the Cold war era, India and the erstwhile Soviet Union (now Russia) have a history of supporting each other in areas of strategic congruence. After Indian independence, Stalinist Russia considered India as a “tool of Anglo-American imperialism”. Things changed dramatically after Stalin’s death in 1953 and till 1971, the trade between India and USSR was based on the Rupee – Rouble rate determined by the Gold exchange standard. In 1971, the abandonment of the global gold exchange led to a devaluation of the Rupee against other western currencies (but not gold), thereby putting the Rouble at a disadvantage. In 1971, the exchange mechanism was linked to a basket of currencies and
the economic and defence cooperation between the Soviet Union and India was financed on the basis of state credits granted to India on favourable terms. The currency of the credits was an artificial monetary unit – Rouble with base value equal to 10 Rupees that was subject to adjustment proceeding from changes in the Rupee value of a special basket of 16 currencies (the basket of the SDR unit as of 1978). This artificial “credit Rouble” and the mechanism of its rate determination were quite different from the domestic Rouble being the non-convertible domestic currency of the Soviet Union
