a) In pursuance of a cultural agreement signed between the Asiatic Society, Calcutta and the Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences, Moscow in March 1995, a project has been undertaken to compile accessible materials, now available in the Russian Archives, pertaining to Indo-Russian Relations from the earliest period on 1947. As a first step in working out this programme, I was deputed by the Asiatic Society to Moscow in May-September 1994 to collect archival documents. Then in May-August 1995, the Asiatic Society deputed a team of three scholars- Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta, Dr. Hari Vasudevan and myself to Moscow to collect archival documents for the period 1917-1947. The team brought back with them immensely valuable materials, virtually unknown to scholars till now. The bulk of the material is in Russian and English. Again I was deputed to Moscow and London in June-October, 1996.

b) The period between 1917-1947 is of special interest in view of the fact that after the October Revolution, the Soviet Union became a source of inspiration to liberation movements in the countries in Asia, particularly India, under colonial rule. Many Indian revolutionaries, who were in exile, shifted their centre of activity to the Soviet Union during that period. The documents reveal unknown chapters of international Communist movement. Some materials, in fact, contradict the hither to known facts. From those collected materials, the selected documents were edited and published in two volumes by the Asiatic Society, which are as follows :

(i) Indo-Russian Relations 1917-1947 Select Documents from the Archives of the Russian Federation.
(Part-I-1917-1947).Edited and compiled by Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta, Hari Vasudevan and myself, in April, 1999 and

(ii) Indo-Russian Relations-1917-1947, Select Documents from the Archives of the Russian Federation.(Part-II-1929-1947)Edited and compiled by Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta and Hari Vasudevan and myself in May 2000.