The author of the following article analyses M.K.Gandhi’s sayings about Russia, its history and culture. M.K.Gandhi (1869-1948) was the leader of Freedom struggle in India and the “Father of the Nation”. One can find these sayings in Gandhi’s numerous works - books, articles, speeches, letters and interviews, which are included into The Collected Works by M.K. Gandhi in 100 volumes. He was especially interested in Russia because of Leo Tolstoy regarded by Gandhi as his Guru. Gandhi and Tolstoy wrote to one another in 1909-1910 and Gandhi called the great Russian writer “the Apostol of non-violence”. 

Gandhi never visited Russia. He took all the information about the country from the enemy English press and people who had been to Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Yasnaya Polyana at different time. The author of the article thinks that Gandhi’s opinions on the Northern country were full of distrust and criticism. Gandhi connected the ruling regime in Russia, Tzarism followed then by Bolshevism, with terror, violence and suppression of deprived of civil rights and its share people. The only positive thing he mentioned was the opening of schools to abolish illiteracy and raise the people’s awareness as well as the development of the Russian language as a national one. 

Gandhi neither sympathized with the Soviet leaders nor read a single article by Lenin or Stalin. For him, Lenin was a reformer and Stalin was a dictator. Gandhi supposed that Russia was responsible for the beginning of the Second World War, even if Russia had been forced to fight. At the end of his life Gandhi highlighted that Russia had nothing India should learn from, and criticized the Indian communists for the propaganda of Stalin’s Socialism.