Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
the requirements of North Vietnam's advance towards socialism." 174/
Honey deprecated contrary statements issued by Hanoi about the same time -- e.g., that the NVA would "always stand ready by the side of the CPR in its struggle to recover Quemoy and Matsu, and to liberate Taiwan…" and thought that:
"It is very probable, although not a scrap of evidence has so far come to light which would corroborate it, that Ho Chi Minh was secretly reassuring the Soviet leaders, explaining that North Vietnam was supporting China only with empty words, while her actions proved that she had not been taken in by Maoist innovations." 175/
D. S. Zagoria interpreted the DRV strategy debate as less a dispute over external relations than over internal priorities: "The crucial local issue has resolved around the relative priority to be assigned to economic development of the North and struggle in the South." He concluded that "pro-Soviet" view prevailed simply because "between 1957 and 1960) northern leaders agreed on the need to concentrate on economic development." 176/
Proponents of both interpretations conclude that Hanoi's predilection for the USSR was ipso facto a deferral of support for the insurgency in the South. But the evidence supports a third interpretation. It is quite possible that the DRV leaders sought and won Soviet support be cause they found it impossible amicably to set priorities between internal and external national objectives. It seems evident that only the Soviets could offer the wherewithal to pursue both sets of goals simultaneously, and it is possible that the Lao Dong leaders opted for "guns and butter" rather than "socialism in one country." The apparent harmony among the pro-China and pro-Russia "factions" by early 1958 bespeaks such a compromise solution. Of course, serious doubt remains whether the Soviets would have valued DRV fealty high enough to pay the price, yet it seems that such could have been the case. The new DRV-USSR understanding reached during 1957 definitely included the extension of material aid which North Vietnam needed for its economic advancement. It evidently also included Soviet concurrence in a more adventuresome policy toward reunification. Whether or not specific DRV advances upon South Vietnam were countenanced, it is evident that the DRV leaders had obtained Soviet recognition that North Vietnam's circumstances placed it outside the range of strategic and doctrinal considerations which had lead Khrushchev, et al., into "peaceful competition" and "peaceful coexistence."
