Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
carry through the tasks of the national and democratic revolution against all schemes of reaction to hinder progress of society … "
"The Declaration of the Conference of Representatives of Communists and Workers' Parties in Moscow in.1957, and the new statement are a profound summary of the experiences of revolutionary struggle and of building a new life of our time. They represent a development of Marxism-Leninsim for the new conditions of history." 207/
But none of the communist statements--neither the Moscow Declaration of 1957, nor that of 1960; neither the Lao Dong Resolution of September, 1960, nor that of January, 1961--attracted much attention in the West. Neither did the Manifesto of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, proclaimed,in December, 1960, seemingly in response to the Lao Dong Third Congress Resolution. But N. S. Khruschev made news with his 6 January 1961 "wars of national liberation" speech … Khruschev's remarks were actually little more than a precis of the Moscow Declarations of 1957 and 1960; nonetheless, they shocked the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in his "A Thousand Days," declared that Khruschev's "elaborate speech ...made a conspicuous impression on the new President, who took it as an authoritative exposition of Soviet intentions, discussed it with his staff, and read excerpts from it aloud to the National Security Council ....Underneath the canonical beat of language, the oration sounding a brutal joy over a world where democracy was everywhere on the retreat and communism everywhere on the march." 208/ The President and his principal cabinet officers returned to this speech again and again in their explanations of Administration policy. 209/
Khruschev offered an analysis of the world situation as it appeared at the beginning of the 1960's and declared that, as of that moment, "the prevention of a new war is the Question of all Questions." He described three categories of wars: "world wars, local wars, and liberation wars or popular uprisings." World wars, he declared, were unlikely. Local wars were also improbable. But, he said, "liberation wars and popular uprisings will continue to exist as long as imperialism exists… such wars are not only admissible but inevitable ... an example … is the armed struggle of the Vietnamese people .... " He asserted uneQuivocally that "the communists support just wars of this kind whole-heartedly and without reservation and they march in the van of the peoples fighting for repression." But Khruschev's speech notwithstanding, by 1961 the strategic course of the DRV was well set, and the new President was already at war in South Vietnam with the DRV.
