Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
Communist Party, and in 1954 it appeared that France, by rejecting the European Defense Community bought Soviet cooperation in settling the Indochina War--at the DRV's expense. 81/ Post Geneva, Soviet support of the DRV came into tension with its-Strivings toward detente with the U.S. Generally, the Soviets seemed willing to accept the Cold Ivar line SEATO drew at the 17th parallel, and were quite cool to DRV "reunification" talko But the most disruptive factor in Moscow-Hanoi relations after Geneva was not Washington, but Peking. The CPR, like the USSR, seems to have regarded the DRV as a pawn in a world-wide test of power. The Chinese would probably have been disinterested in having on its southern border a unified, strong Vietnam, even though it were communist. ·They seem to have always regarded support of the DRV as a way to embarass the Soviets, to attack the U.S . position in Southeast Asia, and to frustrate the US-USSR detente. Nonetheless, the Chinese had earned high regard in the DRV because they were willing, as the Soyiets were not, to succor Ho with military aid in his hour of need. Moreover, Mao's form of revolution seemed far more relevant to the J..ao Dong leaders than the Russian version. Propinquity thus reinforced the attraction of China both as a source of aid and as a socialist model, and offset much traditional Viet-Chines~ antipathy. However, like the Soviets, the Chinese maneuvered in Vietnam £or broader goals than DRV success. In· 1954 and 1955, possibly seeking to encourage an American withdrawal from the Taiwan Straits, the CPR adopted a soft line which blurred their stance on Vietnam just as the Geneva elections came into view. 82/ In 1956, Khruschev's depiction of Stalin's monstrous leadership at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union called into doubt the validity of Soviet preeminence within the Bloc. Mao's bids for Stalin's former position then split the Bloc.
Ho's isolation was borne home to him within the year after Geneva , as the deadline approached for consultations preliminary to the elections. Although the Soviet Ambassador to Hanoi had joined a chorus of dark threats from DRV representatives that "violent action" would follow if the consultations were delayed, the 20 July 1955 deadline passed while the parties to the Agreement were in the Summit Conference at Geneva on ways to decrease world tensions, and the Bloc did not press the point. Ho took the extraordinary step of a formal appeal to Diem, but the GVN on 7 August 1955 strongly rejected Hanoi's overtures for talks. 83/ A subsequent DRV appeal to the UK and USSR co-presidents of the Geneva Conference was also of no avail. In January, 1956, China, and then the USSR, did request another Geneva conference; but the USSR and the UK responded only by extending sine die the functions of the International Control Commiss ion beyond the expiration date. 84/
All indications are that Ho preferred to follow the Soviet lead, probably from both repugnance at the prospect of further dependency on China, and realization that the Soviet was in a better position to provide the kinds and amount of foreign aid and trade the DRV
