Pham Van Dong thanks Khrushchev for the Soviet help to Vietnamese people. Khrushchev talks about politics around the world, particularly, in the socialist countries such as Albania and China. He claims that the relationship with China is improving. Khrushchev also mentions that he discussed Indian politics with Mao. He criticizes the politics of Stalin toward China. 

On this second day of the talks, international affairs were the main topic of conversation. From the Soviet record, which like those of the first and the next discussion, was made by Fedorenko and the third secretary of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs Anatolii I. Filyov, it is evident that the atmosphere was fully relaxed, anti-imperialism brought the communist leaders together. Both hated America, Great Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, and their leaders. They discussed the situation in the Near East in detail and were heartened by the victory of leftist forces in Iraq. They joked a lot. And only at the end did Mao lightly touch upon his claims to Khrushchev, who at once reminded the Chinese leader of the Soviet advisors. It was obvious that this question continued to bother him, and Khrushchev exacerbated his grievance.

The author of the Arabic-language book from which these excerpts are derived from is Ahmad Hamrush (1921-2011). Involved in the Free Officers’ coup of July 23, 1952, Hamrush left the army in 1955, but stayed a regime insider. He became a historian who wrote a multi-volume history of the coup, among other books; he edited several journals including the army’s al-Tahrir and the famous political magazine Rose al-Yusuf; he was Secretary General of the Egyptian Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity in the 1960s; and he was a travel writer, as this book shows. It recounts a journey in 1968 to the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and North Vietnam.

Although in the 1950s and deep into the 1960s, African decolonization struggles had attracted much attention in the Arab world and perhaps especially in Arab North Africa, Asia was a key concern, too—in the 1960s especially Vietnam. This was of course not exceptional. As books like Quinn Slobodian’s Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (2012) have shown, Vietnam as a cause—and some Vietnamese as actors—helped midwife the German student movement in the 1960s. (In Germany, the shah’s Iran and Iranian activists mattered greatly, too, however.) To take two more examples, Vietnam as a mode and model of reference mattered to anti-Soviet Lebanese leftists in the 1960s, as Laure Guirguis’ “La référence au Vietnam et l’émergence des gauches radicales au Liban, 1962-1975” (2018) has shown, and Iranians—leftists and others—followed developments in Vietnam closely, as Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet has noted in “The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran” (2021).

What distinguishes this text is its timing. Hamrush reflects on a journey he made soon after the Six-Day War of June 1967. That month Israel inflicted a humiliating defeat on Arab armies, including Egypt’s, the most powerful Arab state. This drastically amplified concerns some already had had about President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s (1918-1970) regime and triggered much self-critique in books like Al-naqd al-dhati ba‘da al-hazima (1968; in 2021 translated as Self-Criticism after the Defeat) by the Syrian Marxist political thinker Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm (1934-2016).

The Albanian Party leadership discusses recent meetings with the Chinese Communist Party, the state of Sino-Soviet relations, and the funeral of Ho Chi Minh.

Japanese Foreign Minister Aichi and Soviet Premier Kosygin discuss bilateral relations, disputed territories, the legacies of World War II, China, and the NPT.

Khrushchev and Indian President Radhakrishnan discuss regional tensions, including cooperation with Nepal, the situation in Kashmir, and the spread of socialism in Southeast Asia. Radhakrishnan expresses concern over Chinese aggression and reaffirms India’s commitment to peaceful solutions. Khrushchev downplays China's influence, criticizing Mao Zedong’s leadership and emphasizing the unreliability of Chinese policy. Both leaders affirm the importance of continued Soviet-Indian cooperation amid regional challenges.

Mao echoes a recent statement from Ho Chi Minh, opposing American imperialist aggression in South Vietnam. He urges revolutionaries around to support South Vietnamese [communists] in their struggle against the Americans and Ngo Dinh Diem. (Note: Originally published in the People's Daily on August 30, 1963.)

Zhou and Stalin discuss potential meetings with representatives from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Japan.

On the attempts of Ho Chi Minh to mediate between Albania and the Soviet Union.

Yudin recounts his meetings with Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhou Enlai. In three meetings, Yudin learned more about China's relations with other communist parties in Asia, economic conditions in China, and developments in the Korean War.