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The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam, 2012.

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North Vietnamese Decision-Making, 1973-1975

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Sino-Soviet Split, 1960-1984

The Two Koreas and the Vietnam War

Sino-Soviet Relations

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Võ, Nguyên Giáp (Vo Nguyen Giap)

1911 - 2013

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Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN)

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Vietnam. Central Military Party Committee

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China. Embassy (Soviet Union)

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Maneli, Mieczysław

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Lê, Duẩn

1907 - 1986

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July 6, 1968	Minutes of the Discussions between Cdes. L.I. Brezhnev, A.N. Kosygin, N.V. Podgorny and UAR President Nasser, 6 July 1968 Brezhnev and Nasser discuss the relationship between their two governments and brainstorm ways to sustain Soviet-Egyptian cooperation. Special attention is given to combating Western imperialism and increasing Soviet military aid to Egypt.
April 28, 1975	From the Journal of A.F. Dobrynin, 'Memorandum of the Conversation with Secretary of State of the United States, H. Kissinger, 28 April 1975' On April 28, 1975, Kissinger urgently informed the Soviet Union that North Vietnamese forces had begun shelling Saigon’s airport and the U.S. Embassy complex, killing two Marines and disrupting the evacuation, which he claimed violated an assumed two-week timeframe and risked forcing American military intervention. Ambassador Dobrynin dismissed Kissinger’s insinuations of Soviet involvement.
April 22, 1975	From the Journal of A.F. Dobrynin, 'Memorandum of the Conversation with Secretary of State of the United States, H. Kissinger, 22 April 1975' In an April 22, 1975 conversation, Henry Kissinger conveyed President Ford's concern to the Soviet Union about North Vietnamese troop movements near Saigon's airport, warning that any attempt to trap Americans could force US military intervention, while General Scowcroft clarified that Marines were positioned offshore for potential deployment but Ford preferred to avoid their use if possible.
April 19, 1975	From the Journal of A.F. Dobrynin, 'Memorandum of the Conversation with Secretary of State of the United States, H. Kissinger, 19 April 1975' In an April 1975 meeting, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urgently requested Soviet assistance in facilitating a temporary ceasefire in Vietnam to ensure the safe evacuation of American personnel and South Vietnamese allies, emphasizing the Ford Administration's need for an orderly exit to maintain credibility.
April 3, 1975	From the Journal of A.F. Dobrynin, 'Record of a Conversation with with the Secretary of State of the United States, H. Kissinger, 3 April 1975' This memorandum records a conversation between Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on April 3, 1975. Topics discussed included U.S. assurances about Soviet submarines, limitations on U.S. technology shared with Japan, and preparations for Soviet leader Brezhnev’s visit to the U.S. Kissinger also shared views on Middle East peace efforts, Southeast Asia, and ongoing disarmament negotiations, emphasizing cautious cooperation while maintaining strategic priorities.
February 26, 1971	From the Journal of M.G. Podol’sky, 'Record of a Conversation with R. Berthold, Counsellor of the GDR Embassy in Hanoi, 18 February 1971' A Soviet official in Vietnam recounts a meeting with an East German diplomat. The two sides discussed the nuclear threats from the United States in the Vietnam War, as well as relations with China.
July 25, 1965	Record of a Conversation between L. I. Brezhnev and N. Ceausescu and I. G. Maurer on 25 July 1965 Ceausescu emphasizes the importance of repairing Sino-Soviet relations. The two leaders end their conversation by discussing Ceausescu's travel plans for an upcoming visit to the USSR.
1969	Ahmad Hamrush, 'An Egyptian in Vietnam, Korea, and China' (Excerpts) 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).
June 27, 1966	Excerpt from a Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Albanian Party Leaders, 27 June 1966 Zhou Enlai, Enver Hoxha, and Mehmet Shehu have a detailed conversation about high-level purges in the Chinese Communist Party. Zhou also discusses China's difficult relations with North Korea and the Vietnam War.
September 12, 1964	Record of a Conversation between Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers N.S. Khrushchev and President of India S. Radhakrishnan 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.