Thi-Hong Luong and Ha Hai Hoang
The Historian, 87(1), 44–65, 2025.
Abstract: After the First Indochina War, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) deepened its close relationship with friendly socialist countries, paving the way for Hanoi to receive increasing amounts of economic aid from them. Communist economic aid to the DRV, however, only bloomed when US military force was directly involved in South Vietnam. By tapping recently declassified documents from Vietnamese archives, mainly from Phủ Thủ tướng (Collection of the Prime Minister’s Office), and Ủy ban Kế hoạch Nhà nước (Collection of the State Planning Committee), this article provides a Vietnamese perspective on communist economic aid to Hanoi. The view from the Vietnamese archives shows shifts in the awarding of communist grants and loans. The shifts were not only a result of confrontation between the hostile Eastern and Western camps during the Cold War, but were also caused by competition within a split(ting) communist bloc. This research study also challenges the common understanding of the DRV as a “puppet” of Moscow and Beijing: It presents a picture of the DRV as an independent entity, revealing that DRV leaders made autonomous decisions and were ultimately proactive with their choices. The Hanoi authorities were neither “puppets” in the hands of the Soviet Union, nor were they controlled by Beijing.
About the author: Luong Thi Hong was a HYI Visiting Scholar from 2024-25.