The Soviet Union & Vietnam WAR
Understand how the Soviet Union played a big role in Indochina.
The Communist Leaders and the GOD.
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Stalin..."...was in fact a lonely, deluded, and fearful old man. addicted to ill-informed pontifications on genetics, economics, philosophy, and linguistics, to long drunken dinners with terrified subordinates, and ---oddly--- to American movies. "I'm finished," he ackonledged in a moment of candor shortly before his death. "I don't even trust myself." pp104 (The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis)
Khrushchev told a group of Chinese early in 1957. "[M]ay God grant that every Communist will be able to fight for the interests of the working class as Stalin foughts". pp 109 (The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis).
By the end of 1949, the Soviet-American contest for Europe had became a stalemate, and that created temptations to exploit opportunities elswhere. Stalin had sccumbed to these when he allowed Kim il Sung to attack South Korea, while simultaneously encouraging Ho Chi Minh's war against the French in Indochina.......pp 122 (The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis).
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http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/bookrev/varhall.html
The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War by Ilya V. Gaiduk. Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1332 North Halstead Street, Chicago, Illinois 60622, 1996, 250 pages, $28.95.
This book is an essential text for students of either the Vietnam War or Soviet studies-participants in the former or practitioners of the latter. As its title clearly suggests, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War seeks to examine the role the Soviet Union played in that conflict. It does not purport to tell the whole story, but it is a landmark book in that it begins to fill in this major void, represented to date by speculation on the part of Western observers.
Allowed access to the Storage Center for Contemporary Documentation (TKhSD) in Moscow for a short period before authorities decided it was a potential political Pandora's box, Russian researcher Gaiduk weaves an impressively objective portrayal of official Soviet policy with materials from credible Western archives and authors to tell his story. The book details US and Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) policy, political strategy, and initiatives. The People's Republic of China (PRC), a major factor from the Soviet position, receives much less detailed coverage, and the Republic of Vietnam barely manages to show for the event-although many would argue that this represented reality. The book is meant to be a diplomatic history, and it is; yet, unlike many works of this ilk, it is neither dry nor confined to diplomatic exchanges.
This book is not a post-cold-war apologia for Soviet policy. The Soviet Union had three clear objectives regarding the conflict: to maintain the advantages of peaceful cooperation with the US; to support national liberation movements and their role in the eventual final victory of communism; and to reduce the influence of the PRC in the world communist movement. Gaiduk does an excellent job of explaining this as well as how the DRV used its leverage regarding the internal contradictions of such a policy against Moscow. Yet, if there is a major shortcoming in the book, it lies in the fact that Gaiduk is too quick to come down on the side of Moscow's search for a negotiated settlement to the war. I do not fault him on evidence; rather, I praise him for detailing it. Yet his analysis pays little mention to the benefits to Moscow of ostensibly "pressing" for negotiations while watching the protracted conflict sap the strength of its major international foe. And, in fact, Gaiduk's sources support such a postulation, given the continued refusal of the USSR to act as a direct broker. For his part, however, Gaiduk would argue with conviction that Washington's repeated use of bombing just after proposing an initiative for reducing the hostilities undermined Moscow's credibility. Likewise, Gaiduk's experience in Soviet society appears to have colored his perception of the ability of the US military to sway administration policy, although he is right on the mark when it comes to discussing the filtering of information to policymakers.
The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War is definitely a worthwhile purchase. The work has been extensively researched, as witnessed by its 36 pages of endnotes. It details the lengths to which the US went to keep the Soviet Union advised of the former's moves regarding Vietnam, the importance of the China card to the US, and Soviet policy throughout the period. This book is must reading.
Gregory Varhall
Kaneohe, Hawaii