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March 7, 1968

Record of Conversation between L. I. Brezhnev and N. Ceausescu on 7 March 1968

A record of a conversation in which Brezhnev and Ceausescu discuss weather or not to say that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will only be signed once the United States ends its actions in Vietnam. Brezhnev advises not to raise the issue, while Ceausescu claims that it must be stated in order to advance a solution towards disarmament.

February 26, 1971

From the Journal of M.G. Podol’sky, 'Record of a Conversation with R. Berthold, Counsellor of the GDR Embassy in Hanoi, 18 February 1971'

A Soviet official in Vietnam recounts a meeting with an East German diplomat. The two sides discussed the nuclear threats from the United States in the Vietnam War, as well as relations with China.

1969

Ahmad Hamrush, 'An Egyptian in Vietnam, Korea, and China' (Excerpts)

The author of the Arabic-language book from which these excerpts are derived from is Ahmad Hamrush (1921-2011). Involved in the Free Officers’ coup of July 23, 1952, Hamrush left the army in 1955, but stayed a regime insider. He became a historian who wrote a multi-volume history of the coup, among other books; he edited several journals including the army’s al-Tahrir and the famous political magazine Rose al-Yusuf; he was Secretary General of the Egyptian Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity in the 1960s; and he was a travel writer, as this book shows. It recounts a journey in 1968 to the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and North Vietnam.

Although in the 1950s and deep into the 1960s, African decolonization struggles had attracted much attention in the Arab world and perhaps especially in Arab North Africa, Asia was a key concern, too—in the 1960s especially Vietnam. This was of course not exceptional. As books like Quinn Slobodian’s Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (2012) have shown, Vietnam as a cause—and some Vietnamese as actors—helped midwife the German student movement in the 1960s. (In Germany, the shah’s Iran and Iranian activists mattered greatly, too, however.) To take two more examples, Vietnam as a mode and model of reference mattered to anti-Soviet Lebanese leftists in the 1960s, as Laure Guirguis’ “La référence au Vietnam et l’émergence des gauches radicales au Liban, 1962-1975” (2018) has shown, and Iranians—leftists and others—followed developments in Vietnam closely, as Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet has noted in “The Anti-Aryan Moment: Decolonization, Diplomacy, and Race in Late Pahlavi Iran” (2021).

What distinguishes this text is its timing. Hamrush reflects on a journey he made soon after the Six-Day War of June 1967. That month Israel inflicted a humiliating defeat on Arab armies, including Egypt’s, the most powerful Arab state. This drastically amplified concerns some already had had about President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s (1918-1970) regime and triggered much self-critique in books like Al-naqd al-dhati ba‘da al-hazima (1968; in 2021 translated as Self-Criticism after the Defeat) by the Syrian Marxist political thinker Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm (1934-2016).

June 27, 1966

Excerpt from a Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Albanian Party Leaders, 27 June 1966

Zhou Enlai, Enver Hoxha, and Mehmet Shehu have a detailed conversation about high-level purges in the Chinese Communist Party. Zhou also discusses China's difficult relations with North Korea and the Vietnam War.

October 1, 1977

Talk Given by the Minister [Trần Quốc Hoàn] at the 3rd Investigative Conference [Excerpts]

Trần Quốc Hoàn reviews cases against foreign and domestic spies in the Vietnam Wars.

March 15, 1971

The Minister’s Speech to the Conference Reviewing Fifteen Years of Struggle by the Public Security Service against Reactionaries Who Exploit the Catholic Religion

In 1971, North Vietnam’s Public Security Service (the North Vietnamese equivalent of the former Soviet KGB, known at the time as the Ministry of Interior) held a national conference to review the status of the Service’s efforts targeted against the Vietnamese Catholic Church over the past decade and a half and to formulate plans and policies for its future operations directed against the Church. In this speech given at the opening of the conference, Party Politburo Member and Minister of Public Security General Tran Quoc Hoan [Trần Quốc Hoàn], outlined the successes that he said had been achieved in gaining the sympathy and support of the Catholic “masses” and in combatting what he called “reactionaries exploiting the Catholic religion”.

1971

A Few Opinions Expressed by the Minister on Several Basic Issues during the General Review of the Handling of Cases (Spoken during a Discussion with the Committee to Review the Handling of Cases in 1971) [Excerpt]

VWP Party Politburo Member and Minister of Public Security General Trần Quốc Hoàn's comments about "transforming" the Catholic Church in Vietnam.

November 30, 1965

Transcript of Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Jean Chauvel

Premier Zhou and a representative from the French foreign ministry, Jean Chauvel, talk about the Vietnam War. Zhou voices China's support for Vietnamese people's requests for U.S. troops to withdraw from Vietnam and not interfere in Vietnamese internal issues. Zhou says that the U.S. has not comply to Vietnam's request and has on the contrary expanded the war. Chauvel agrees with Zhou that the final decision about the Vietnamese War should be made by Vietnamese people. Chauvel says that the priority should be to stop the current war and calls for a ceasefire to solve the issue. Zhou cites the U.S. expansion of troops and continued involvement in Vietnam as the cause of heightened tension in Vietnam War.

April 2, 1965

Transcript of Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Muhammad Ayub Khan

Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Pakistan President Muhammad Ayub Khan regarding the Vietnam War. Zhou says that China firmly supports Vietnamese people's war against the U.S. Zhou also states that if the U.S. forces or expands the war to China, then China will resist to the end. China will not actively start a war with the U.S. but it is prepared in the case war happens.

October 20, 1963

Transcript of Conversation between Zhou Enlai and Buddhist Association Representatives at the Asian Buddhist Conference

Zhou Enlai talks with representatives from several Buddhist Associations in Asia. They discuss the percentage of their population that practices Buddhism. Zhou criticizes President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, for oppressing Buddhist religious leaders and followers. The representatives and Zhou emphasize strengthening friendly exchanges among Buddhist circles in various countries.

Pagination