Dmitry Mosyakov

Soviet-Vietnamese Relations: New Documents and a New Perspective on their History

ЮГО-ВОСТОЧНАЯ АЗИЯ: АКТУАЛЬНЫЕ ПРОБЛЕМЫ РАЗВИТИЯ, 2025, №3(68), 287-306

 
Annotation: This article explores Soviet-Vietnamese relations from 1950, when President Ho Chi Minh of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam secretly visited Moscow and met with Joseph Stalin, until March 1953, when Stalin died. This period is significant in the subsequent history of Soviet-Vietnamese relations. It can be called the initial period, or the key period, because it was during this time that the relations between the two leaders, the two parties, and the two countries were particularly close and trusting, something that would never be the case again after the death of Joseph Stalin. It can be said that the mutual sympathy between the leaders of Vietnam and the USSR, as well as their shared views on the outside world and the challenges of domestic development, laid the foundation for the unique nature of Soviet-Vietnamese relations for many years to come. The Soviet Union had no such history, no such shared victories, and no such mysteries in its relations with any other country in Greater East Asia, except perhaps China. The answers to some of these mysteries can be found in the text of this article. In the course of its preparation, the author studied both archival documents and memoirs of participants in the events, as well as valuable articles with information about this period that have been published in recent years. All of this allows us to reconstruct the events of those years in sufficient detail and to define the boundaries of the Stalinist period in Soviet-Vietnamese relations, highlighting its specific features and dispelling some misconceptions about the nature of the relationship between Joseph Stalin and Ho Chi Minh.

Keywords: Soviet Union, Vietnam, Moscow, assistance, anti-colonial struggle program