Tai Lieu Chat Luong Table of contents Preface. 13 - The Moscow archives. 18 Chapter 1: Vietnamese communism and the Soviet Union (July- December 1954). 20 -Soviet and Chinese positions during the Geneva Conference.
21 - The Geneva Agreements. 22 - Hanoi and the Geneva Agreement. 24 - Vietnat11's communist heritage. 25 -Consolidation of the two zones.
26 ~i -Building the North. 28 -Establishing a Soviet-Vietnamese relationship. 30 -Moscow's first steps in Vietnam. 32 Chapter 2: Forging anew relationship (December 1954- February 1956).
37 -Diplomatic struggle: Moscow, Hanoi and the International Control Commission. 37 -The start of a new Soviet policy?. 41 - Ho Chi Minh in Moscow. 45 - "to counter the American influence" - "to broaden the front and create a mass organization".
48 -~ -The China factor. 52 -Defining a new strategy. 56 -Conclusions: a dual policy?. 60 'I 1 1 DEFENCE STUDIES 4/1997 3 J j J 'I Chapter 3: Growing differences 2: The cost of training PA VN military (January to December 1956).
63 in Soviet institutions. 145 -The Lao Dong and the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. 63 -The Geneva Agreement in 1956. 67 Sources and Bibliography.
··········· 146 -No elections- no Soviet protest. 72 ·········· 147 - Land refonn and the rectification of errors. 77 -Hanoi's southern strategy. 81 -The triangle- Hanoi, Moscow, Beijing.
86 -Conclusions: growing differences. 88 Chapter 4: A two-state solution? (January 1957 to December 1958). 91 -The Soviet Union and the UN proposal. 91 -Effects of the UN proposal.
93 - Sine-Soviet cooperation. 98 -The Lao Dong debates its policy on reunification. 106 -Conclusions: preparing for the 15th Plenum. 108 Chapter 5: Toward a new revolution (January 1959- December 1960).
110 -The Fifteenth Plenum, January 1959. 110 -Moscow, Hanoi and the means ofreunification. 112 -Unrest in Laos. I 16 - More unrest in the South.
119 -The Lao Dong and the Sino-Soviet split. 120 -The Lao Dong Third Party Congress. 122 -Economic and Military Assistance. 124 -Toward a new revolution: the foundation ofthe NLF.
126 Epilogue and conclusions. 129 -Vietnamese perceptions of the relationship. 131 - Soviet perceptions of the relationship. 134 -The China factor.
137 -Solidarity and national revolution. 138 Appendix 1: Politburo and Secretariat of the Lao DongCentra!Committee. 141 4 DEFENCE STUDIES 411997 DEFENCE STUDIES 4/1997 5 Preface and Vietnamese sources as well. The degree of actual Soviet in Vietnam can perhaps best be measured on the Vietnamese side.
A new generation of international historians is growing up with access to Vietnamese sources. pr_irnary sources from former communist states. Mari Olsen's generation, Olsen is part of a collective effort to correct a Western bias. One With some backing from veteran historians of the cold war, is going to le_,,ff.>ct of the communist system was to prevent the emergence of correct.
the Western bias that still characterises cold war history. Her study historical scholarship in a great number of the world's nations. and ofSov1et-V1etnarnese relations in the period between the two lndochina tPI·ev•entforeign experts from basing their historical studies on solid Wars builds on a thorough examination of available material from the Thus the Vietnam War is often thought of as a war in the history foreign ministry of the former Soviet Union, and sheds new light on the United States and its foreign policy rather than an event in the Soviet-Vietnamese relationship. Ironically her most conspicuous finding is of Southeast Asia, lndochina and Vietnam.
After the end of the cold that the Soviet Union wielded less influence over Vietnamese decisions than we have seen not only an upsurge of western studies based on Soviet. many earlier historians have thought. Moscow had some moderating and East European source material, but also the emergence of a influence, insisting for a long time that the Vietnamese comrades should ~eneration of independent-minded, source-critical historians from former stick to the Geneva agreement and seek a peaceful solution to the problem on,mlln;<t countries. They now take up positions in their own national as of national unification.
Since, however, this policy led nowhere and the as in western universities. The Russian scholar llya Gaiduk's study of communist movement in South Vietnam was subjected to disastrous policies towards Vietnam in the 1960s was published even before repression from the regime ofNgo Dinh Diem, the Vietnamese communists Olsen had completed her study of the 1950s. Chronologically, how- adopted a new policy in the late 1950s. leading to the formation of the , Mari Olsen's book forms the immediate background for the study National Liberation Front in 1960 and to the southern insurgency that in the book of Gaiduk.
would bring about the Second lndochina War. The Vietnamese were able to One serious bias remains in the scholarship of the lndochina Wars. secure support both from China and the Soviet Union for this policy, but it a Vietnamese- and also Laotian and Cambodian- perspective, the grew out of the Vietnamese experience and was only reluctantly accepted Union may be considered a part of the West. The inside version of in Moscow.
lndochinese part of the story rem ins to be told. Still today it is impossi- Mari Olsen goes far towards arguing that the Soviet Union was dragged both for foreign and Vietnamese historians to get access to source unwlilmgly mto supporting Hanoi's policy for an armed insurgency in the '"'"''"'""'from debates and major decisions in the Vietnamese Communist south. She has many other interesting points to make in her study, but this during the period when it was called the Vietnamese Worker's Party IS probably the one that most of her readers will remember. Some may also 951 to 1976).
This applies to the People's Revolutionary Party of Laos as want to seek further evidence before being entirely convinced. Since Mari Young Vietnamese and Laotians who are curious about their own Olsen could only examine foreign ministry files, and was prevented from cmmtrv's history can of course read the authorized version. If they know getting access to minutes from the few high level meetings that took place English language, they can also satisfy their curiosity by delving into m the penod (see her introduction), there will be a need for additional the American side of the story, and now they can learn what the Russians studies in the future. Mari Olsen' s point needs to be confirmed by further Chinese were doing in their countries, and what the foreign communist research, based on the Soviet Central Committee archives, and perhaps on dignitaries thought about their leaders.
But the young lndochinese cannot 6 DEFENCE STUDIES 4/1997 DEFENCE STUDIES 4/t997 7 study the main political events in their own country, based on national source material. The ironic effect of the communist parties' continuing insistence on secrecy is to deprive their own young generations of an ~ansli1ten1ticm from Russian in the text and in the footnotes is based on opportunity to form independent, national scholarship. Laos and Vietnam by the U. Board on Geographic Names.
All translations from remain doomed to a colonial-style dependence on foreign expertise and are my own. The use of words such as friend and comrades are foreign history. directly from Russian. When tovarishch is used in Russian I use Let me express the wish that Mari Olsen's study will soon become word comrade, and the Russian word druz 'ya is translated into widely known in Vietnam, and that it will be used as an argument for as friends.
I have not attempted to interpret the meanings of these developing Vietnamese historical scholarship. it is with pride that I recommend the present study both to Vietnamese are three different ways of spelling Viet-Nam: with the hyphen, and international readers interested in the international background to the hyphen (VietNam), and as one word (Vietnam). I have adopted Second lndochina War. The book is a slightly revised version of a pioneer- Vietnam, except when spelled otherwise in a direct quotation.
ing and extremely valuable thesis, breaking new ground on the basis of spelling has been adopted in the case ofVietminh. hitherto unexploited sources, and advancing the controversial hypothesis the terms North and South in a geographical meaning. When that Moscow was unable to control its Vietnamese client. to northerners and southerners I mean the persons origin.
For the term "southern regroupees" refers to Vietminh cadres who Copenhagen, 4 August 1997 ""'·~~ the South to the North after the withdrawal of Vietminh Stein Tgnnesson from the South as provided for in the Geneva Agreement. The between North Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as well as South Vietnam and the State of Vietnam, and subse- the Republic of Vietnam, have been adopted to achieve variety in Lao Dong VietNam was the name of the Vietnamese Communist from 1951 to 1976. In the period before 1951 it was called the .hin~''" Communist Party. lt is usually translated into English as the 1arne~;e Workers Party (VWP), but is also referred to as the Lao Don g.
thesis I have chosen the short form of the Vietnamese name; the PP""'"'"'" 1 showing the positions of Lao Dong leaders is based entirely waua<DJo Soviet documents. The Vietnamese side has yet to release a full of members of the top Lao Dong leadership, and accordingly )trrmt110n about the changes within the leadership which occured during part of the 1950s. 8 DEFENCE STUDIES 4/1997 9 This study is a slightly revised version of my thesis in history. I would like to thank in particular the following people for their assistance and enthusiasm: my academic supervisor Odd Arne Westad at the Norwegian 'Vioetnam and the socialist Camp Nobel Institute, Sven G.
Holtsmark at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Studies, and Stein T0nnesson at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies. Communist Party of the Soviet Union Thanks to financial support from the Norwegian Institute for Defence Central Committee Studies and the Cold War International History Project I have had the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministersvo opportunity to- present my work at international conferences. Innostrannich Del) Southeast Asia Department (sub-department in MID) Committe on State Security (Komitet GosudarstvennoiBezopasnosti) Democratic Republic of Vietnam Vietnam Worker's Party Dang Lao Dong VietNam (the Vietnamese translation of the VWP) People's Army of Vietnam (North Vietnamese) National Liberation Front of South Vietnam Vietnam Fatherland Front People's Republic of China Chinese Communist Party Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) Vietnam and the United States State of Vietnam (to 22 October 1955) Republic of Vietnam (from 23 October 1955) Army ofthe Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnamese) United States Military Assistance Advisory Group Southeast Asia Treaty Organization Temporary Equipment Recovery Mission Training Relations and Instruction Mission 10 DEFENCE STUDIES 4/!997 11 ,;; >:nnth? Secondly, Vietnamese perceptions of Soviet attitudes to Introduction a;fi<:atiion policy. Did Hanoi alter its policies according to Soviet And thirdly, the Moscow- Hanoi- Beijing triangle.
To what Sine-Soviet relationship influence the relationship between and Vietnam? In each chapter these themes will be The American decision of May 1950 to assist France in the First Indochina th•rntr~h a detailed analysis of the political relations, and to some War was based upon the "domino theory"- the fear that all of Vietnam economic and military relations, between the two countries. would fall into the Communist sphere and take with it the rest of Southeast Asia.' In other words, the U. government used the fear that the whole of Asia would come under Communist control to legitimate its involvement in French Indochina. five years there has been an enormous development within The two wars in Vietnam, and the American involvement in particular, foreign policy.
With the opening of Soviet and other have been well covered in scolarly Iitterature since the late 1950s.