On January 24, 1972, the Soviet Union recognized Bangladesh and on January 25, the two countries formally established diplomatic relations. Although India directly cooperated in the liberation war of Bangladesh at the international level, the Soviet Union played an indirect role.

In 1989, the Soviet Union ranked 14th among aid donors to Bangladesh. The Soviets focused on the development of electrical power, natural gas and oil, and maintained active cultural relations with Bangladesh. They financed the Ghorasal thermal power station, the largest in Bangladesh.

August 9th this year marked the fifty years of the Treaty on Friendship, Peace and Cooperation that India and the Soviet Union inked in 1971. It played a pivotal role, paving as it did the path to victory. Russia’s power play prevented a joint Pakistan-American-Chinese attack on the soil of Bangladesh in 1971.

The Indo -USSR treaty of peace, friendship, and cooperation thus became one of the central dynamics that shaped the course of the Bangladesh liberation war.

After World War I (from which Russia withdrew in the year 1917) and the Russian Civil War, the hammer and sickle became more widely used as a symbol for peaceful labor within the Soviet Union and for international proletarian unity.