This issue begins with an article by Balázs Szalontai, who reassesses Soviet policy toward Vietnam during the early Cold War years. Most scholars who have looked at this period argue that the Soviet Union showed relatively little interest in North Vietnam, a Communist-ruled state known formally as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), until the PRC moved to recognize the DRV as the legitimate government of the whole of Vietnam. Szalontai challenges this narrative, arguing that Soviet leaders began establishing close links with the DRV as early as 1948, well before the PRC was even created. From the outset, Soviet leaders regarded the Communist regime in North Vietnam as fundamentally legitimate and the non-Communist government in the South as illegitimate. This perception, more than the influence of Mao Zedong in China, shaped Soviet policy toward Vietnam during the early Cold War.
The next article, by Olga Dror, discusses an important...