"Ho Chi Minh and the War in Vietnam" in Khrushchev's Remember

Abstract

Khrushchev was a famous Soviet leader who played a very important role in the world politics during the post-Stalin period. During his life, he had many chances to meet and talk with Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lei and other state leaders. After he was forced to withdraw from the Soviet leadership in 1964 and retired in 1966 his memoirs was smuggled to some Western countries and published in English for the first time in 1971 in the USA under the title "Khrushches's Remember". In this document, Khrushchev tells the readers many stories concerning many important historical events and world politics, including the wars in Vietnam and the relations among the Soviet Union, China and Vietnam in the context of the Cold War and the internal conflicts of the socialist block.

Since his memoirs was published it has been exploited and interpreted intensively by historians in many countries. However, as some scholars have pointed out, the information providing in his memoirs needs to be crosschecked by other sources, for it a memoirs is.

In this article, I firstly give an introduction of his memoirs concerning Ho Chi Minh, the wars in Vietnam and his thought, interpretation and feelings as top Soviet leader during the internal conflict of the socialist block. Although some stories telling by Khrushchev seem to be untrue, they reflect clearly the thinking and feeling of the Soviet leaders during the first and the second Indochina wars. And these are valuable for further understanding of the extremely complicated circumstance of the struggle of the Vietnamese people under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh for national independence. These contribute also to further understanding Ho Chi Minh and his role in the world communist movement.