Benediktov, Ivan A.

Journal entry by Benediktov describing a conversation with Indian Foreign Ministry General-Secretary R.K. Nehru regarding border disputes with China. Approaching the Soviet envoy at a social gathering, the Indian official relayed an oral message to Khrushchev from Indian Prime Minister Nehru (whom he described as "exceptionally busy, very tired"), giving his analysis of the underlying motives behind China's actions in the border dispute. The Indian leader assessed that Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai--with whom Nehru had cooperated in championing the rise of the non-aligned movement only a few years earlier--opposed the current militant policy toward India, but that leftist dogmatists-sectarians within the Chinese leadership, such as Liu Shaoqi, supported it. They did so, Nehru reportedly maintained, not because of the border dispute, but to strike a blow against the general phenomenon of neutrality in order to discredit Moscow's line of peaceful coexistence and competition with the West, and avoiding general nuclear war. In fact, Nehru was said to declare, the Chinese threatened to embroil the entire world in war, and had divided the globe into two new camps: not East and West, but "one - for the continuation of the human species, the other (the Chinese sectarians) - against."

Journal entry by Benediktov describing a conversation with General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, E.M. Nambudiripad. The encounter took place a day after the Soviet leadership had dramatically modified its policy on the Sino-Indian dispute (in an October 25 article in Pravda), suddenly taking a pro-China position, evidently due to the danger of global war breaking out as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, then peaking. While taking pains to welcome the Pravda article as helpful in correcting misunderstandings among Indian Communists, the CPI leader acknowledged that the party secretariat had concluded that "this publication in all probability will inaugurate a new period of anti-Soviet hysteria in India," pushing the Indian Government toward the West, and he pleaded with the Soviets to influence China to resolve the border dispute "without damage to the prestige of India and of Nehru himself."

Journal entry by Benediktov describing a conversation with the charge d'affairs of the Chinese Embassy in India, Comrade E Cheng-Cheng, referred to as "Comrade E." in the document. In the conversation, the Chinese official gave Beijing's version of the building Sino-Indian border confrontation, blaming India for attacking Chinese posts along the border, and asserting that India had "gone too far" to resume normal relations with the PRC. Ten days later, China launched a broad attack on Indian positions along the disputed frontier.

Journal entry by Benediktov describing a conversation with Indian Prime Minister J. Nehru. In the excerpt presented here, Nehru expressed a positive evaluation of Soviet-Indian relations, complimenting Khrushchev for his role in resolving the Cuban crisis, but in response to the Soviet envoy's emphasis that the border crisis with China be settled peacefully he firmly defended India's stand that PRC forces must withdraw from recently-occupied positions (e.g., return to the line held on September 8) before talks could start.

Minutes of conversation between Aid to the Yugoslav State Secretary Milorad Pesic and Soviet Ambassador to Yugoslavia Ivan A. Benediktov regarding Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs Marko Nikezic's visit to India to discuss the Middle East crisis. The two leaders also discuss the opening of a direct communications line between Belgrade and Moscow.