This inventory provides a listing of the Soviet archives concerning India's relations with the USSR during 1917-1947. The inventory goes beyond the standard publication of this type, which contains a list of collections and inventories of files. The inventory provides a detailed account of individual files and their contents. In this respect the volume contains raw material for researchers which is not normally available in inventories. No equivalent publication exists nor any equivalent publication exists, nor any equivalent archival guide in any archive or library in the USSR or India.

The inventory covers a number of archives in the Moscow St. Petersburg area, although the bulk of the material is from the Russian Archive for social and political history located in Moscow. This is the archive that houses the main archives of the Communist International and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A range of other archives figure in the listing. These include the state archive of the Russian Federation and the Archives of the Russian Ministry of External affairs as well as a range of other archival collections. (jacket)